Accepting Imagination Deficit

Autistic people are said to have an imagination deficit. At first, when I heard that, I outright rejected it, saying things like 'the people who think autistics lack imagination are the unimaginative ones'.
In my case, I've come to realize that I actually have a form of autism in which imagination is usually a talent, certainly not a deficit. Based on that, I've been researching 'creatively gifted' kids, to better understand what that actually means.
But it just occurred to me that if, as I believe, there are some people who are inherently more creative, there must also be people who are inherently less creative - just as the presence of intellectually gifted kids requires that there also be developmentally delayed kids. Whether these unimaginative children are autistic or not, they, too, are part of neurodiversity, and should be accepted for who they really are and viewed as valuable individuals. But whereas I have no trouble accepting both gifted and delayed kids, I find it hard to accept unimaginative kids.
What would unimaginative kids be like? Well, according to this study, they'd be tolerant, practical, reliable, dependable, responsible, logical, understanding, appreciative, good-natured and sincere. To me, that sounds mostly like a mix of good organizational skills and being a people-pleaser. I can accept that people like that are useful, that they counteract some of the problems creative people tend to have, that while creative people tend to be better at coming up with ideas, these people would be better at actually implementing them. But I think of the joy and beauty of creating something new, and I don't really feel that those things make up for not having that.
Now, I'm sure I'm not being fair to them. Likely, things that have little appeal to me bring a similar kind of joy to them. I know I'm doing exactly what Amanda Baggs criticized here, but I don't know how to stop from doing that. Or, as Zilari explained in a comment on the above post, part of my checklist of things someone must have in their life to be happy is 'creating things'. It's certainly part of what I need in my life to be happy, but clearly not that way for many other people. But I just can't imagine how someone could be noncreative and happy that way.
I'll just have to keep working on it.

Strength in Abnormality = Deficit is Nothing New

One phenomenon I've noted is the tendency to try to interpret every way a disabled person differs from the norm as a deficit, even our strengths. The most well-known example of this is probably the Block Design peak in autism.
A number of studies found that autistics tend to have noticeable strength in Block Design, in some kids significantly better than normal (I once saw the IQ test scores for an autistic boy who had gotten the lowest possible score on Comprehension and Vocabulary and the highest possible score on Block Design). Not all autistics have Block Design peak, but it's extremely rare for a non-autistic to have significant Block Design peak.
The interpretation given to that was 'weak central coherence' - a deficit in perceiving the big picture, 'can't see the forest for the trees' cognitive style. In reality, most people, including autistics, do not naturally segment images into equally sized blocks but rather along color borders and using a bunch of extrapolation to estimate what the thing looks like in 3 dimensions. There have been a number of studies showing this, and no evidence has been presented to suggest this is vastly different in autism. So in order for anyone to do well on Block Design, they must force a different segmentation than is natural, something which someone with weak central coherence would have difficulty doing.
But the tendency to interpret a strength in a disabled person as a deficit is very pervasive. And just now I discovered it dates back at least to 1953, most likely earlier. In 1953, Margaret S Mahler and Paula Elkisch described a child, Stanley, considered 'psychotic', in the journal The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, volume 8, pages 252-261.
Stanley was a strange boy. He cried whenever he heard a story 'When You Were A Baby' which he insisted on hearing, and reacted similarly to a number of other stories about babies. He would try to feed pictures of crying babies and played with a book called Fun With Faces, in which you could switch a baby's face from crying to not crying. While playing with that face he "threw up his stiffened and flexed arms, strained and tightened his arm muscles rhythmically in this position for some time, while twisting his head downward and to the left side. His face was bizarrely distorted with widely open mouth and protruding tongue."
Relevant to this post, he showed a remarkable memory. This was not interpreted in a positive manner. Rather, this is how they introduced their article:

"Parents of psychotic children frequently stress the fabulous memory these youngsters have. Closer examination of this phenomenon in severely disturbed children reveals that this seemingly positive ability actually expresses grave pathology of the ego in the most crucial and important mechanism of defense: repression."

In other words, Stanley had a deficit in forgetting!

Is It Really 'Twice Exceptional'?

I've been looking through the Hoagies' Gifted page about gifted disabled kids. A common term, used by them as well as many others, to describe such people is 'twice exceptional'. Besides the non-specificity of this term (it applies equally well to multiply disabled people, such as deaf-autistic, blind-CP, etc) I have another problem with this term.
It assumes the person has two distinct differences. This is fairly accurate for gifted people with disabilities that aren't based on how you think and feel, such as blind gifted people or gifted people with solely physical disabilities. But is it really accurate to describe a gifted-LD, gifted-autistic, gifted-ADHD or any other gifted and developmentally disabled person as 'twice exceptional'?
On one online IQ test, I scored 158. In general, I tend to score in the 130s (the cutoff for giftedness is generally 130). I am also diagnosed with PDD NOS, a form of autism. So, therefore, I must be twice-exceptional, right?
Except that I've only got one brain, and there is not an 'autistic part' and a 'gifted part'. Except that I'm gifted in a characteristically autistic way. Except that my gifts are common among autistics, and my difficulties are common (in a less severe way) among gifted people. Except that I don't think giftedness and autism are really very separate at all. Except that my difficulties are caused by the exact same underlying traits that cause my gifts.
For an example of the last, and most important, point: I am extremely creative. I am also very disorganized. I've found that creativity is considered a common trait in gifted people, and disorganization is common in autistics (where it is generally subsumed under the broader category of executive dysfunction).
Here's the thing - both are caused by the same trait. I call myself a tangential thinker. This means that my thinking is like a mental web, with many interconnected ideas, and I easily wander off into various tangents. This causes creativity in that I find myself unexpectedly connecting ideas in ways most people wouldn't connect them - thinking of how things connect and putting them together in distinctive ways, and looking at things from unusual perspectives. This also causes disorganization because I don't stick with one thing the 'right' amount of time, instead sticking with some things too long and others too short, I wander from objective reality into ideas, I wander into the intricate details of a tangential topic and I do not naturally think in sequences. From my perspective, they're really the same thing. But the 'positive' results of tangential thinking are labeled creativity and subsumed under giftedness and the 'negative' results of tangential thinking are labeled disorganization and subsumed under neurodevelopmental disability.
Most gifted-developmentally disabled people are probably like this - in reality, many traits of both conditions are the exact same trait in a different circumstance. A common example is visual thinking. Many visual thinkers have trouble with language, especially with reading, while being gifted at math, mechanics, drawing or other visuo-spatial activities.
PS: I also think that for developmentally disabled kids, giftedness shouldn't be only having a full-scale IQ over 130. In the American Journal of Medical Genetics Part B, volume 134B, pages 104-109, they describe a girl with a full-scale IQ of 99 whose subtest scores ranged from 5-18 (normal is 7-13). I think kids like her are gifted disabled, too, despite having a nongifted IQ.

Why Coming Out Doesn't Apply as Well to Autism

Often, parallels are drawn between autistic rights and gay rights. I agree with many of these parallels (I'm currently reading On Being Gay and seeing many problems described which are also present among autistics, such as the difference between gay community and other minorities who are more genetically and familially distinct) but there's one aspect which is different, which I want to explore. That is coming out.
The first important difference is that autism is more obvious than gayness. It's relatively common for an autistic person to be identified as such by someone else before they even know they're different. And many autistics can't hide it in some or most situations no matter how hard they try. For example, if you watch Amanda Baggs's videos of herself on YouTube, it's hard not to realize she's disabled. Even my father, who seems pretty NT, was recognized as autistic by an educational psychologist because when he quoted Temple Grandin, he quoted her Texas accent as well as her words.
So it's more common for autistics than gays to be given no choice about whether to come out or not, because autism is more obvious. In fact, it's probably much more common for autistics, especially of the younger generations, to be diagnosed by someone else instead of self-identifying. And then it's on record that they're autistic.
Secondly, if an autistic isn't diagnosed, very often they don't know what autistic is. Most people know the defining characteristic of gayness - being sexually attracted to the same gender instead of the opposite gender. There is no such defining characteristic of autism, or if there is, it's not known. Instead, it's defined by a cluster of traits that are not easy to define or determine. The self-identification of autism basically is 'I feel my mind works similarly to people I know of who are considered autistic' which is certainly not well-defined. And since autism is both less common and harder to define than gayness, most laypeople have a much poorer understanding of how to tell if someone is autistic. So an autistic may know they're different, but have no idea there is a word for how they're different. How do you come out if you don't know what you are?
The normal is less clear too. Most gay people are certainly aware that the norm is to be sexually attracted to the opposite gender. But many autistics think various aspects of their differences are normal. I thought everyone thought the way I did, but for some inexplicable reason were better at handling the world than me. I knew that I was gifted, but thought that just meant having a good memory and thinking fast (and because I didn't remember everything perfectly and sometimes processed more slowly, I doubted I was really gifted).
In addition, gayness primarly affects personal relationships, whereas autism also affects performance in school/work and self-care and things like that. (I know gay people have been fired for being gay, but I'm talking about effects directly as a result of interaction between one's mind and the work environment.) Diagnosed autistics may need to reveal their difference in order to get things like extra time on exams, natural lighting, etc in work or school or else they will have trouble performing. And they may need assistance caring for themselves on a daily basis, such as getting regular meals, although they're less likely to actually get it. In this area, a better parallel are other disabled people.

Gifted, Blind and Hairy

I just found a reference I've been looking for, and to make sure I don't loose it I'm posting it here.
The condition I was looking for is called Amaurosis Congenita, Cone-Rod Type, with Congenital Hypertrichosis. According to that link, it's characterized by severe retinal dystrophy from birth, profound photophobia, trichomegaly, bushy eyebrows, synophrys and increased facial and body hair. In other words, they're almost totally blind, don't like bright light, and are hairy.
Although that link says they "were not mentally retarded", the journal article describing those two actually gave some information about what they were like mentally. They both had above average school performance. The elder one, an 18 year old, was musically gifted, her younger cousin was shy and introverted. That's only a bare minimum of information but it certainly suggests that they were gifted.
The link above appears to have reached the conclusion that their giftedness was unrelated to their syndrome, but it's really too early to tell. If they were mentally retarded, the assumption would be that it was related to their blindness and increased hair. Giftedness has the same frequency as mental retardation. It's probably just as genetic. And more and more, it's being shown that some conditions cause both disabilities and talents, such as Williams Syndrome. But still, they dismiss the possibility of a relationship when both of the only described cases of this condition were gifted.
We really need more case reports, that mention whether the affected individuals are gifted, to know for certain if it's associated. Knowing how intelligent their siblings are would help, because if these two had equally smart siblings then chances are it was inherited separately. I'm worried that if someone does find some people who are similarly affected, they will say only that they had no developmental delay, because they don't know that giftedness might be associated with this condition.
Ettina