Autism Related Traits linked to Visuospatial Constructive Skill of STEM versus non-STEM University Students

Students vary between one another, however, this is not simply random variation, engineering students, for example, are noted to be more conscientious than other students. Nevertheless, differences between students, and educational implications are not well understood. To address this, we applied an educational neuroscience approach to attempt to understand intellectual and mental-focus differences between STEM and non-STEM undergraduate students. Drawing on research in autism which shows that the typical autistic profile is much more common in mathematicians and scientists than in other vocations, we theoretically link this to abilities in visuospatial processing, skills that are important for learning in STEM subjects. To test this approach empirically, we applied a three-dimensional visuoconstructive task, usually used in clinical neurosciences research, to two groups of university students, studying for either STEM or non-STEM majors. As hypothesized, students that display autism-related traits, irrespective of their major, perform better on this task. This observation extends an existing body of knowledge that has shown this phenomenon with two-dimensional mosaic block tasks. Furthermore, STEM students were found to spend longer on cognitive planning before attempting the task, than non-STEM students. We found no significant differences on other measures, including social cognition, and fine motor coordination. This suggests that a relatively specific feature that may vary between STEM and non-STEM university students relates to spontaneous application of top-down cognitive control, as opposed to more impulsive trial and error problem solving.