Spatial acuity in females with AS?

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I'm curious... all the web pages I've looked up about characteristics of women with AS say nothing about spatial acuity, or whether any psychologists have bothered to test for it.

As a female with AS, do you have more difficulty or less difficulty with spatial tasks than NTs have?

For the record, I'm male, but that stereotype about ALL men and boys being spatial wizards simply isn't true... I've always been able to excel at spatial tasks that would frustrate most other men.

Likewise, I've been tested and found to have unusually good spatial ability. It helps me in engineering, but perhaps more so in traveling, as I sometimes think I'm the only one in my family who can read maps.

Understandable. My mother was NT and had a horrible sense of direction... she'd always swear she parked her car at the wrong end of any big parking lot... and when she tried to build things like cabinets, etc she'd always get frustrated and angry because she expected them to fit together without proper measuring. Some of the things she built looked like Franken-furniture.

I score high in both, spacial ability and visual-spacial ability. I, too, am quite good at reading maps, and one of the jobs I do, is drafting for an architect...

It depends on the type of spatial task. I tend to be above average manipulating shapes in my mind an envisioning what something would look like from a different angle, I tend to have good aim, and a good mental map, but I am below average in sight estimating size, and thus determining whether or not my car will fit between two cars when parallel parking, which I tend not to do. In all fairness to me though, my car is notoriously difficult to parallel park, even by those who consider themselves good at it.

I actually have lots of problems with spatial awareness. I'm surprised there aren't more chiming in here with that. Then again, the literature on this subject is mixed - it's like it's one extreme or the other with Aspies.

I literally cannot navigate anywhere unfamiliar without the aid of GPS or MapQuest. Unless I've been there a ton of times, or it's just one or two turns, I cannot process or reverse the required spatial steps in my head to get to where I need to be.

I was terrible at understanding 3D shapes in geometry. It was my worst subject.

I cannot rotate 3D images in my head.

Visualization is somewhat limited. I have chromesthesia, so music makes me see shapes and stuff, and I can recall things I like in my head easily -- but I cannot visualize when people give me verbal directions on whatever it is they want me to visualize. Like when they say, "Imagine yourself in a forest doing x y and z." No, can't do that. Hated those kinds of exercises in college.

I also cannot visualize how to get around in unfamiliar buildings. I am a substitute teacher, and when the office people tell me stuff like, "go left by the water fountain and then take a right by the ramp and take two lefts before you reach the bathroom," I usually get lost on the first step because I can't even locate the water fountain they are pointing to. This happens approximately 95% of the time.

First person 3D perspective video games make me instantly dizzy and nauseous. Even third person can get difficult if I play for a prolonged period of time.

All of these deficits were confirmed in IQ testing. I scored a mere 98 on perceptual reasoning on the WAIS IQ test, contrasted with 134 on the verbal comprehension portion.

Finally, baseball is hard for me to figure out. The open-space sports, like basketball and football, are fine for me spatially, but baseball and its diamond movements and all that jazz makes my head hurt. Neurotypicals EVERY SINGLE TIME will ALWAYS tell me baseball is EASIER to figure out than the other sports, BUT THAT IS NOT TRUE FOR ME. Basketball and football are WAY easier for me to understand and process. They are OPEN SPACE! Big difference.

So, overall, definitely more of a language thinker. Not a very spatial person.

Well I doubt I can follow a star to find baby Jesus but I can play instruments with my eyes closed but I think it's because of memorising where the notes are, once I know where a certain key/ string is and what a sound sounds like I'm off like mark knopfler

I'm female, was tested in high school, and have below average spatial ability. In fact, I recall the psychologist telling my mother that this is probably why I have such difficulty with mathematics. I have superior-to-gifted verbal ability, which isn't surprising to me. I don't know if verbal ability is relevant to autism, but that's that.

-catchme

I am pretty terrible at spacial acuity: I can get lost 10 blocks away from home (it has happened to me). However, I don't think being an aspie has anything to do with this. My mother is just like that, so I guess it must be genetic.

I probably end up averaging out in terms of my spatial acuity. Ironically I think my degree path has helped me get used to this type of thinking in order to make sense of what I'm seeing. I wasn't always great at reading maps for instance, and would ordinarily see a whole bunch of squiggly lines. I've had to concentrate much harder on improving those skills, so it does seem like practice can make up for minor shortcomings.

Hi I know this thread is a little old but I wanted to comment. I meet all the criteria for Aspieness but a psychologist diagnosed me with NVLD because of the difference between my verbal iq and performance iq and get this he said I was too aware of my differences/symptoms to have autism! Anyway I will be getting reevaluated at some point before I turn 18 but it is good to see other less visually oriented Aspies