Is giftedness more prevalent among Aspies?

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It was 24 years ago, but I think the test itself dated from the 60s, and I think was more pop psychology than actual psychology. But what I do not know is if it reflected design of official IQ tests, but I would not be surprised if it did. I doubt any legitimate tests today do this.



I totally forgot to mention this.

If there is a high rate my gift must have been lost in the post.

My niece went to a school for the gifted and most of the women in my family have ADHD traits.
She may have some traits but it's hard to tell with teenagers. She is unorganised and does things last minute, also she has an encyclopaedic knowledge of certain subjects, not as fixed as Asperger's though.

She has said that some of her friends have 'no social skills whatsoever' so maybe there is an overlap between gifted traits and AS. Maybe one is misdiagnosed when they are gifted and maybe they have AS when they are called gifted, and maybe they are both.

When I read about gifted traits I can relate but I had a learning disability which really affected my grades. Seeing as I do better at academic subjects when medicated it might have just been ADHD all along that held me back.

I'm also interested if any one has statistic on the rates various learning disabilities are diagnosed among children identified as gifted, as I've heard that with things in the vein of ADHD, AS, and Dyslexia it's unusually high.

What is gifted?

I'm NOT gifted at all except for having misunderstandings with NTs

How do you take an official IQ test? I would like to know if I would be considered gifted.
I was given an IQ test as a child and I refused to cooperate. They told my parents that my score did not reflect my intelligence.
I have taken several different on line IQ tests and got a score in the 140s on each test.
How accurate are these? Is there any point in taken an official IQ test. It is probably very similar to the online tests.

Why is it called gifted? I get it confused with talented. It shounld be called genius.

I don't know, I probably fell under the categories of gifted. I remember as a kid, taking a standardized test and scoring like 12th grade reading level in like 1st grade. My math was lower, like 6th grade, but my private school taught well. That was probably the first sign of my NVLD, but I was at private school, and could live life in ignorant bliss. So, for a while, I think people did think I was gifted, but then my failings from NVLD started to appear, both socially and in my school work, and yeah...

NVLD basically is half a genius most of the time. My verbal IQ is like 130+, but my nonverbal IQs, not just social cues and stuff, but even things like shape arranging and all that as around 80 from what I remember in my diagnosis. So I'm gifted, I guess, but it's curse in other ways. I believe my life is sorta hard, as I get so much responsibility handed to me simply because I "know" how to do stuff, but if I can't deliver, people tend to basically hate me. So half of me is basically disabled, and half of me is extraordinarily abled, and it's a tough paradigm.

As far as AS, I mean, the people diagnosing me said basically "almost but not quite" but I think it's more because my upbringing, if I had upbringing in a normal household and in public school, I'd have been f****d. I almost assuredly would have been diagnosed AS in a public school, too, but my Christian school had no psychiatrists or anything in it, so no diagnosis despite really "obvious" AS kind of behavior.

Whatever, gotta take the cards you're given.

I refuse to take an official IQ test these days as:

1 I do not believe they are particularly accurate. Your performance on the day can be affected by many different things including how well you slept the night before and whether or not you are feeling well. It can also be affected by any processing disabilities and things like educational background and so on.

2 I believe intelligence is more complex than IQ tests lead one to believe. Yes a person may have certain levels of ability in certain areas at certain points of time (as measured on the day...see above) but...

a These levels of ability are probably not static
b How they all interact together will determine how they manifest themselves.
c The personality of the individual will also affect how intelligence or various skills sets manifest themselves

and so on.

3 I think an IQ score can cause a person to either over estimate themselves or underestimate themselves depending on the score. Someone with a low score may go away thinking they are not very intelligent and cannot succeed at something and that may not be completely true...they may have ability the test did not measure, they could be affected by some of the factors above and so on. Those who get a very high score may go away thinking they are superior. I have known several people who tested with an IQ of 140 + and they were the most irritatingly arrogant people I have come across. One of them always referred to himself as the more intelligent one when talking to me which was annoying, because grade for grade at University, I was the higher grade average so whether or not he was the most intelligent one is debatable.

Arrogance is the enemy of learning...as once you think you know it all...what is there left to learn? Plus you can become too complacent and start making silly mistakes. I always like to remember that, although I might be academically bright, I am not always right and that there is still much to be learned!

As I eventually said to my somewhat arrogant friend: I am as intelligent as I am intelligent and that works for me! I do not want to reduce something as complex as intelligence to 2 or 3 little digits on a page...It is so much more complicated than that.

Very well put indeed! I have gotten variations of 30 points higher or lower, depending upon locale for testing, and whether or not I had enough sleep.

Bravo!

The concept of "intelligence" interests me from a philosophical, cultural, and scientific point of view. However, I find I can rarely have an "intelligent" discussion about the nature of "intelligence" because too many people have too big of an emotional stake in defining "intelligence" in such a way that it best reflects their personal cognitive profile of skills and abilities. It's similar as to when I attempt to discuss "gender" in that individuals feel that their identities are being "attacked."

You pretty much summed-up how I feel about IQ tests and "intelligence" in general. And anyone who thinks I'm going to give their socio-political views any more credence just because they have a "high IQ" is in for a nasty disappointment.

[quote="hartzofspace"][quote="bumble"]As I eventually said to my somewhat arrogant friend: I am as intelligent as I am intelligent and that works for me! I do not want to reduce something as complex as intelligence to 2 or 3 little digits on a page...It is so much more complicated than that.[/quote]
Very well put indeed! I have gotten variations of 30 points higher or lower, depending upon locale for testing, and whether or not I had enough sleep.[/quote]

Yes. People try to quantify far too many things that aren't meant to be quantified, they are far too complex to be reduced to a single linear factor. Everyone has their own mental talents in their own ways. I think one reason people seem to be getting worse at math is that they don't understand modeling and misuse numbers all the time.

Speaking of lack of sleep and performance on IQ tests, I took an online IQ test at 4:00 AM this morning and I was so sleep deprived that I could feel the mental impairment it was bringing, and I managed to get a score of 142, not that that means much as online IQ tests are even less accurate than professional ones. Is this at all normal?

One interesting thing that I'd like to point out, is that IQ tests do not measure intelligence so much as they measure your test taking abilities.

I was using the term gifted as it's what I see the most here on WP.

Gifted is when your IQ score is two standard deviations above what is typical. Genius means your IQ score is 3+ standard deviations above typical. That's why "gifted" isn't "genius."

I don't know and, apparently, nobody knows, because nobody in the thread made a link for any paper studying the issue

[quote}
3. Is the converse, the rates of AS diagnosis being higher among gifted people, true?[/quote]

Well, if 1 was true, I suspect that 3 will also be true.

When IQ tests were invented, in the begining of last century, the practice was to inflate to scores of women to have an avarege IQ of 100 for both sexes.

Perhaps today women perform better in IQ tests and, because that, the practice was inverted - deflate women scores (again, to have an average IQ of 100 to both)?