Innovation through neurodiversity: Diversity is beneficial.
Harriet Axbey, Nadin Beckmann, Sue Fletcher-Watson and 2 others
PMID 36880441WHAT IT FOUND
Independent raters judged towers built in mixed autistic/non-autistic pairs as less similar to each other than towers built in single-neurotype pairs.
This suggests neurodiverse groups produce more diverse designs, though the effect was small and based on an artificial task.
Key findings
01Towers built in neurodiverse pairs were rated as significantly less similar to each other than those built in single-neurotype pairs.
02There was no significant difference in tower height between neurodiverse and single-neurotype groups.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The study used a single stimulus set of tower-building tasks, which may not generalize to other types of creative or collaborative work. Images were presented in black and white to control for color bias, which may have altered how similarity was perceived. The task was observational rather than collaborative; participants did not interact directly during the building phase. The effect sizes for the similarity differences were small (d = -0.126 to -0.284).
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest. The study was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Templeton World Charity Foundation.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the lower similarity scores as proof that neurodiverse groups are more innovative in real-world clinical or workplace settings. This was an artificial task measuring visual similarity of towers, not actual creative problem-solving or functional outcomes.