Do people with ADD or Asperger's Syndrome often show different learning curves than neurotypical individuals? There's some interesting discussion at this Wrong Planet thread

Specifically, I was wondering whether people with ADD or Asperger's Syndrome are more likely to show a logistic pattern in their learning curves?
Although I don't know any publications exactly on that matter it is possible to be true.
So please treat this as a speculation.

People with Asperger Syndrome (or High-Functioning Autism) have higher attention to detail and tend to build more rigid structures in their minds (while neurotypicals may have more error-tolerant but less efficient structures). So it is very possible that the learning curve for AS starts slowly and then have sharp leaps. In the initial stage they may see merely a collection of facts (while neurotypicals can manage to work with them as they are less demanding when it comes to the self-consistency and structure). However, when it 'clicks' and one understands pattern of the structure it may give a considerable advantage.

Moreover, it may be also about time spent learning. Once a person with AS feels safe in a topic, (s)he may like to learn it even, while for a neurotypical there is no so much fun in learning more details.

When it comes to the relation of skills and cognitive style and Asperger Syndorme, the following references may be useful: 


Samuel J. Umland, Karl Wessel "Cassandra Among the Cyborgs" in Darren Tofts Prefiguring Cyberculture: An Intellectual History
Hsu-Min Chiang, Yueh-Hsien Lin, Mathematical ability of students with Asperger syndrome and high-functioning autism: A review of literature (2007)


The first one is an essay relating cognitive styles of: people with AS, nerds and science. The second shows that there is high variance in mathematical skills among people with AS (so most are below average, but some are way above).

From my experience, the effect is very well visible when it comes to presenting knowledge. Nerdy people typically are bad at presenting topics they don't understand well. Neurotypical do it much better (perhaps because they make 'didactic lies' much easier, or they are not concerned so much by 'chaos' or lack of self-consistency, or they are better at repeating catch-phrases). At the same time nerds understanding a topic well often understand it really well (knowing a lot of connection, analogies, what is exact and what approximate, etc).