90% aspies have normal intelligence despite what they think

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Hi Rascal, thanks. It's interesting primarily because there are so many cases reported that an ADHD diagnosis preceded an ASD diagnosis, and that many autistic people, especially children have traits of ADHD or even are diagnosed with it (in the study, 30%). Add to all this researches that indicate there's a genetic connection between ADHD and ASDs (some even arguing ADHD should be merged into the spectrum), and it will be quite surprising that this particular research pointed out that such subtests like coding and symbol search that require fast information processing and good hand-eye coordination at the same time, qualities that normally would be attributable to good attention and focus, are clearly more correlated with ASD symptomatology rather than ADHD.

My PSI score was also the lowest of all the four subscores, mostly following the pattern discussed in the study: PRI >VCI = WMI > PSI. I believe my WMI score (arithmetic, digit span) was somewhat boosted by some practicing and certain techniques that I used, respectively (I estimate my gain in the range approx. 10-15 on the standard IQ scale). It's interesting that contrary to the study made for the validation of the WISC-IV this time the study included all ASD diagnoses in one group (autism, AS, PDD-NOS), not only HFA or AS in two distinct groups, yet the resulting pattern follows the one of the HFA group's, which conveys the message - or at least I'd like to believe it does - that AS is only a more verbal branch of HFA folks, so HFA is actually a better way to refer to high functioning autistic people in general than AS people (and thus I can regard myself more as part of the community, being diagnosed with PDD-NOS).


Thank you again, this thread has some valuable information (Verdandi never seizes to provide useful information...).

Attention deficit in my life mostly meant not being able to pull the right answer "on the fly" (apart from other concentration issues, especially when reading, which I'm rather slow at, taking into account comprehension too). As a child, and later on as a young adult, my head often teamed with lots of information and thoughts with often uncommon associations between them. I wasn't exactly happy about it because I wanted to achieve more, study more, get better grades, and overall be a better pupil/student. My attention deficit on classes sometimes resulted in mild hyperactive behavior (doing some other things instead of listening, some wiggling, playing with objects). When I concentrated on interesting tasks, e.g. mathematics, arithmetics, my mind was somewhat slow, because I wanted to know the answer right on time, but the answer my mind come up with first had often been erroneous, I had to "re-think" or verify a lot, often in multiple cycles. Perhaps this was the dawn of my high level of critical-sense, I don't know. So, in my opinion, some of the slowness I experience may have an underlying cause closely related to not being able to keep a "straight thought process", in other words, being "inattentive".

I agree with you that - at least partly - slowness may be the result of taking in too much detail at a time, even unconsciously. When there's insufficient filtering, our minds may suppress the unwanted stimuli, like when suppressing the view of the less able eye, thus suppressing not only the invaluable, but - to a lesser degree - the valuable information, too.

No; what disqualifies diagnosis is "clinically significant delay in cognitive development or in the development of age-appropriate self-help skills, adaptive behavior (other than in social interaction), and curiosity about the environment in childhood."

"Clinically significant delay n cognitive development" and "below average intelligence" are different things - the first usually means an IQ < 70 (probably 2% of the population); the second means, I think, an IQ < 100 (50% of the population).

And there is the usually forgotten "in childhood" in the end of the criteria (people with mental retardation can be diagnosed with AS if the MR only becomes visible later); form the DSM-IV: "In contrast to Autistic Disorder, Mental Retardation is not usually observed in Asperger's Disorder, although occasional cases in which Mild Mental Retardation is present have been noted (e.g.,when the Mental Retardation becomes apparent only in the school years, with no apparent cognitive or language delay in the first years of life)"