EJERommel

Hello, Mr. Garcia.

I've been reading up on autistic savants. I want to ask if the desire to perseverate that is common to people with autism can be manipulated.

Meaning let's say an autistic person constantly repeats one particular activity like washing hands for example. Can this obsession for washing hands be diverted into let's say building lego models?

Also, has your need to perseverate helped you in your career? (For example, Matthew Berry of Big Short fame famously read through voluminous excel files with mortgage rates and could detect a pattern (subprime mortages going bad) when the market couldn't; he describes himself as an undiagnosed autistic person)

Thanks for answering. I definitely agree that we need to meet people (autistic or otherwise) as they are instead of what we wish them to be.

Maybe manipulating was a poor choice of word for what I mean to say. What I meant was this ability to perseverate endlessly is a very valuable skill in today's distracted world, and therefore I thought and meant if the thing over which an autistic person could be changed, so that they may have incredibly enriching lives. This diversion of focused energy is what I meant by "manipulate".

If you've done any computer programming or even have looked at any kind of code, you'll understand the value of poring over (and more importantly understanding) 1000s of lines of code in a sitting. I have a thesis that we could train autistic people with just the right skills to become incredible software engineers and that's what led to my initial question.