Thanks for the question and the suggestions so far. I must admit finding shortcomings in generalization a central autistic flaw about which I even have written, not knowing one single source in the literature. It's part and parcel of daily practice and self-evident, and yet...
I've always subsumed it under lack of central coherence / overemphasis on detail / context blindness. If one doesn't form templates which are abstracted from the concrete at hand, one is forced to - over and over again - build bottom up from external stimuli. Now that you ask the question I realize there must be more to it than that. So I'll follow the responses here with great interest.