Lack of imagination...

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Nope. I have plenty. At one point in the final year of uni and a few years after I finished I tried to write comic books. Spent very much time on them. But I learned something. My stories, they didn't make any sense to other people. I look back at them now and they don't make any sense to me either.

lack of imagination is not about creativity or fantasy… it is primarily about the ability to have theory of mind.

it is completely misunderstood by most people, even the so called "experts".

And I'm going to argue people with autism don't even lack a theory of the mind, the issue actually just lies within informational processing.

I lacked theory of mind when I was little.

Yes, as others have said, there is a very important distinction between social imagination (the ability to understand others and predict outcome of events) and creativity. The first is related to autism, the second doesn't seem to have much correlation, as there are many very creative and imaginative AS people - many have special interests that are creative in nature, or are artists, musicians etc. Unfortunately there is often misunderstanding on the part of clinicians about this too as the diagnostic criteria just uses the vague term "imagination".

The only possible correlation might be that there has always been a tendency for a larger number of autistic people to be left brain logical/analytical/mathematical people than right brain artistic/linguistic/imaginitive people. However, more recent information is beginning to show that idea to be erroneous also, at least in the assumption of its magnitude. The focus of study in autism has always been males and as more females are diagnosed it seems to be eliminating that tendency.

Unfortunately there's a lot of outdated information which is still circulated about autism. The updated diagnostic criteria should be a step in the right direction - IIRC the "imagination" thing is not listed there (someone correct me if I'm wrong, I read them a while ago).

I have yet to see any actual evidence that aspies are more likely to be left brained, I've only seen evidence for the opposite. In the very least aspies are statistically less likely to be right handed.

I agree and find the phenomenon quite interesting. All of the literature based on older information and older studies seems fixed on this idea of left brain attributes being part and parcel of autism. I myself am very right brained and imaginative and this forum certainly seems to have a far larger proportion of "right brain" types than "left brain" types (I've seen several threads and polls about it). My own observation also suggests that right brain is more common, and I'm curious where the long-held clinical belief about the mathematical/analytical/unimaginative type came from.

It may be a combination of the male-dominated history of autism (Asperger's original investigations were all with male children, and men are more commonly left-brain than women) and the fact that that type of autistic person is perhaps more "obvious" and easily spotted in terms of their autistic traits, whereas those with better creative and linguistic ability are better equipped to find ways to fit in socially and don't send up as many of the red flags resulting in a diagnosis. That's often offered as the reason far less women have always been diagnosed than men.

I certainly think there are changes happening in the way the condition is viewed and a lot of old inaccuracies coming to light, especially as more autistic people are speaking up about/writing books about/working within the system.