Visual Spatial and Verbal IQ Gap

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On the Stanford Binet, taken at the age of 12, my verbal IQ was 167. On the other hand, my performance (visual spatial) IQ was 72. Is this unusual at all?

I was reading college medical textbooks in the 5th grade yet would agonize over the simplest puzzle.

Unusual, of course, for those afflicted with Asperger's.

I started learning quantum mechanics when I was 12, and you can say i'm an expert in almoust everything about space, but becouse of my dyslexia i cant write it down becouse Work (and my teachers) dousnt know what im talking about.

Nope. Very uneven intellectual profiles are common in both AS and autism in general.

It may get better with practice, but if anyone's got anything more helpful than that I'd be interested in hearing it since I'm in the same boat.
I just avoid spatial problems. It works out OK.

well people with NLD which is similar/the same as AS commonly has verbal iq above performance iq. visual-spatial probems are a feature as well. you can have AS and NLD though.

I honestly don't think there's much of a difference between NVLD and AS. They seem to be the same diagnosis seen from different angles.

My gap isn't that big--less than twenty points, verbal>performance. You have to look at individual subtests for a really big gap--80 points between a test that measured ability to find similarities between words, and a matrix-reasoning test that measured ability to find patterns in visual information.

What I found interesting about this particular gap is that both tests measured ability to find patterns--but when the information was given verbally, as words or concepts, it was a great deal easier than visual information in the form of colors and shapes; so much so that one sort of pattern-finding was my highest score and the other sort was my lowest.

I do not think, then, that it is pattern-finding that I am actually deficient or proficient in, but something about the processing of the information itself that makes it easier or harder to do. Things presented as images don't seem to be nearly as easy to process as things presented in the form of verbal logic.

I have heard that people with language delays often also have a performance>verbal gap, the opposite of what you usually find in autistic people without language delays, even long after they learn to speak.

I think, as a child, I must have had a much lower performance score... I remember being given an IQ test and having a lot more trouble with pictures and shapes than with words, rather than, as today, having only a little more trouble.

I've improved my visual-spatial skills over the years, I think....
Riding a bicycle
Playing computer games
Taking physics and engineering classes that had to do with the shapes of, and forces on, objects
Geometry
Puzzles
Learning to drive (still midway through)
Quilting, crochet, cross-stitch, and other crafts
Designing powerpoint presentations
Doing household chores
Working in jobs that involved manipulating objects in space

And, of course, natural (if delayed) neurological development.

I researched NLD and there are some symptoms that apply but others that don't quite match. For example, I have a bit of trouble completing certain puzzles (such as unfolding boxes in my mind), I am poorly organized, and have sloppy, although not illegible, handwriting. However, my reading comprehension is excellent, I can understand abstract scientific concepts, and I don't have the mathematical difficulties characteristic of NLD.

I've always been better at spatial than verbal although verbal has caught up quite a bit as I've gotten older. My high school SAT and ACT scores were just average for verbal but high for math and science. I've always said I should not have taken any English classes until I was about 30. That's when I was ready for them. My mom told me that I didn't speak much until I was 3. I guess that's a delay. To this day I can have trouble translating something I can see in my mind into words. The feedback I get after explaining something I can visualize tells me I often don't get my point across. It can be frustrating. Sometimes I just make diagrams or graphs.

My verbal is lower than visual/spacial by about 30 points. I had assumed it was typical to have lower verbal IQ if you are on the spectrum, but I could be wrong.