Very few people learn just one way. Usually we learn in combinations. People who have never work closely with autistic people or learned to understand that aspect of themselves do have a difficult time 'seeing' that. Many autistic spectrum children/adults have extremely developed gifts in areas of learning. I was showing some students a fast way to multiply double digit numbers by 11.

23 x 11 = 253; or 37 x 11 = 407.

The next day one student came in and said, "I'll show you something."

He wrote

135 x 11 = 1485.

Took a few minutes for some of us to see what he'd done. These kids were in a special class for 'slower learners'. He didn't understand rules, but he did understand patterns.