In the present day, "imagination" is one of several traits that society at least pays lip-service to valuing.  I have a hypothesis:  Blanket attributiion of "lack of imagination" to people on the spectrum is part of a general process of dehumanization, one that is routinely (and fairly blindly) applied to any group that has been defined as "the other".

The dehumanized can be legitimately eliminated from the species, after all.  One dehumanizes before instituting eugenic measures.

I am not claiming conspiracy.  My model is that the eugenics mindset is so pervasive in much of medical science that it predisposes members of the field to even phrase their questions in ways that look for an excuse to rationalize such practices as pre-birth extermination, and for those more "merciful" sorts of members of the field, de facto or social extermination.  Frame the mind in question as being so innately inhuman that it doesn't matter what means are used to make it conform.

This might not be the conscious intent, but it does appear to be the effect.

I'd say that the Mismeasure of Man effect may be working, in part, on this situation.

I can't agree. The lack of imagination is applied to young children that do not do role play or pretend play, like pretend tea parties.
Autistic children do much less of these typical activities and so they use it in diagnostic criteria.

Is low incidence of role-play or pretend play necessarily indicative of true lack of imagination?  Could it not, likewise, be attributable to different preferences in communication styles?  Is unwillingess to jabber along like the bandar-log a sign of lack of a fully human mind?  Was it not quite recently that autism spectrum included "inability to love" as one of its "symptoms"?

The choice of "lack of imagination" to describe no preference for certain types of play is an inherently dehumanizing choice of language.  I'm not a full-blow Sapir-Worf sort of guy, but there is some value in looking at society with that particular model.

It was not created as a phrasing in order to dehumanize, so your supposition doesn't hold water.

But role playing is not the same thing as imagination. by saying that there is a lack of imagination there saying something with a far more broad meaning than that. And I have heard the Term applied to other behaviours including those of adults.

Well, there was earlier "lack of empathy" and "lack of humour", wasn´t there?
And now it´s been said that autistics do have empathy also, and sense of humour, but it doesn´t show itself so easily and is often different from majority.

In the autism-centre where I was, the psycholog said that autists indeed do have all of those traits, even though they show themselves in a different manner. So maybe the diagnosiscriteria should be written in another way?

Well, what do you know?  I'm not the ONLY person with this opinion regarding "lack of imagination" as a tactic of dehumanization:

http://autisticbfh.blogspot.com/2006/09/...ganda.html

I think you gave her the idea for her blog. I know for a fact that the ABFH is a lurker on this forum.

I agree with the original poster. "Lack of imagination", "lack of empathy" and "lack of humor" do indeed smack of "soulless" and it is perhaps subtly, insidiously dehumanizing.
Even if we do indeed "lack imagination" it shouldn't be the litmus test for humanity, or simply treating "us" decently.
The main test--and this goes back to Shylock in the Merchant of Venice--should be the ability to suffer.
Whether or not I'm imaginative, empathic, or have a sense of humor, I know I can suffer. That should be enough.

But isn't a lot of pretend play a waste of time anyway? Perhaps we just have different priorities as children and prefer doing practical things. After all  we are neurodiverse - not inferior: just different.

I have to disagree, actually. Pretend play is not a waste of time because it prepares young animals for adulthood -- through practice.

Almost every intelligent species engages in "pretend play" when they are young. Some fight, some chase balls of string, some have tea parties with no tea in the cups.

Pretend play for aspies may simply be different. And slightly more likely to be solitary.

Secondly, as a writer of fantasy I would like to say that it is such a falsehood that AS people lack imagination. You only have to read some of the flights of fancy that have been posted in some parts of this and other forums to see that this is not true.

I agree.  The main differnece in expression of imagination in aspies is that it's a lot more likely to all take place in our heads.  What do you think I'm doing when I sit and stare into space?  I'm playing pretend in my head.  The imagery is a lot more vivid and believable there than it is in the outside world.

*stares at titleless story I worked on*

Seems imabgative enough to me. As for roleplaying, text-based online - I do a lit of.

The way the truth is expressed to the world is not the truth itself.

The whole "lack of imagination" thing is deeply flawed because it conflates lack of imagination/creativity with putting a high premium on precision. People tend to associate logical thought with rote, mechanical thinking, but nothing could be further from the truth.
In many of the sciences, e.g. physics, math, chemistry, engineering, etc. there's a lot of creative, imaginative thinking--but it's precise.