Asperger's and high intelligence-- correlation or not?

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Paradoxically, autism has been accused of hiding people's intelligence--as well as highlighting people's intelligence.

There may be a higher proportion of Aspergers people in the upper echolons of IQ as it is currently measured than neurotypicals. So far as I know, no-one has done a study to determine that ratio. My guess is that if it was done thoroughly, first identifying the people in that score range and then testing all of them for Aspergers, controlling for other variables, you would possibly find that the ratio is something like 2:1 aspergers. However that would depend where you placed the cut-off point on the IQ scale. I am thinking about IQ over 130.

Does IQ = how smart you are? I know I have a low reading level, I used to love to read when I was in my 20s & early 30s, I didn't read adult novels, I read teenager books. I didn't understand big words, I still don't understand. Right now, I don't understand long articles on Facebook & health care news, I never understood the president. But I am smart with my money.

In real life, IQ doesn't measure how smart you are. What it does measure is how you do on IQ tests at any point in time - and that's quite a different thing. There are lots of different kinds of smarts. IQ tests are possibly best at measuring intellectual smarts, though even that is complicated by cultural bias, the influence of having a poor or good memory, early childhood education conferring learning advantages against those who didn't get any, socio-economic status of parents, etc. There are many many issues that complicate the veracity of IQ scores.

IQ is so narrow that I look forward to the time when it is scrapped for better measures of human aptitude and ability.

I don't find that paradoxical. As I like to say, autism is a condition of extremes. We can see how the extremes relate to "intelligence" when we look at one skill that is examined on IQ test: language. At one end of the language spectrum, we can find people who are hyperlexic, talking before they walk, and barely able to stop themselves from monologuing, and people who are non-verbal, late talkers, and superior at non-verbal reasoning (pattern recognition) at the other end. With such widely varying autistic traits, it seems more than reasonable (rather than paradoxical) that some manifestations of autistic "intelligence" would be very obvious while others are difficult to observe on the same IQ test.

Also, the wildly varying IQ test subscores that many autistic people have achieved illustrate how autism can both hide and highlight "intelligence" in a single person.

I have no idea what my IQ is. Or really is. I've been tested all throughout elementary school and high school and for some reason I consistently scored between 86 and 88. It didn't make me feel better to read that the national average for my mother's country was in that very range. I've had problems with inferiority for a very long time. I know some say that IQ tests are culturally biased, or something to that effect.

I think I probably have an above average verbal IQ. But in terms of complex math I'm probably below average.
I took an exam for a job yesterday. There was an emotional intelligence portion and out of all portions, I scored the lowest on this.

I don't really care about people's expectations anymore.

What do you mean? It made you feel bad to get an average score?

No. I thought a normal IQ is 100. 86 to 88 is borderline mental retardation, correct? As someone who is Southeast Asian I was always told by East Asians in school that I was an embarrassment and "not really Asian." I mean, people from my ethnic group don't typically become as accomplished as them, and where I grew up, a lot of people of my ethnicity just ended up working at Target or Walmart.

I feel I have to compensate for what I think is inherent inferiority.

I was diagnosed with Aspergers I was 9, and according to the psychiatrist who diagnosed me, I had the IQ of a 17yo.

Actually there are very few true savants & 50% of them are autistic, the other 50% have some sort of brain injury or massive under developed brain such as the true Rain Man, not the on in the movie which portrayed an autistic savant. I have a measured IQ of 89 but the tester told me that if she only graded my high scores I would have scored 140 meaning my low scores were very dismal to say the least & some were actually total failure.

I have struggled through life being largely unable to do work in the areas that were very strong suits for me due to lack of supporting abilities such as executive function.

When I took the aptitude tests for the military in high school I was amongst the top 1% in mechanical comprehension & special perception yet I couldn't do any of the jobs that would have used those skills effectively.

After school I tried various things which were mostly failures for 10 years & spent another ten years on SSI disability due to severe depression & generalized anxiety before figuring out that maybe truck driving would work for me which it has for the last 19 or so years.

All in one place, none in other places. I have won science fairs and national awards, was called an absent minded professor and the hermit animal rescuer from a fictional story. Reminded of "Married with Children's" Kelly Bundy, who studies for SAT's and forgets what a doorbell is. Perfect score on trivia computer game, first time playing. Have apnea while playing.

It is a matter of math. The criteria for the former official diagnosis was average to high intelligence. If you exclude low intellegent people as the former official diagnosis did you are going to get a higher percentage of high intelligence people then both the general population and the overall autistic population. Now that Aspergers is a collequal term people have done what they damm well pleased with the definition and most people seem to define it as at least high intellegence if not genius intellegence.

I have a spiky profile. Good with complex tasks and topics but struggle with simple things sometimes. Depends on the definition of smart I guess. I have always been very good at problem solving.

I have AS diagnosis since about 8 years. Few months ago I had WAIS IQ test. My verbal IQ was 126 and performance IQ was 104. General IQ was 117, slightly above one standard deviation (>15 points IQ) beyond the "middle" (IQ 100).

In verbal IQ I had 18 in Arithmetic, 17 in Information, 13 in Comprehension, Vocabulary and Similarities and 11 in Digit span.
In PIQ I had 14 in Block design, 13 in Coding, 9 in Picture completion and Object assembly and 8 in Picture arrangement.

I am highly intelligent. Sometimes I think that the thinking and logical parts of my brain took away from or ate the social parts of my brain. It does seem like people with above average intelligence tend to have a lot of Autistic traits.

I've heard it said that genius leads to madness but maybe genius is just Aspergers?

Realistically - I believe that intelligence is subjective. I've seen a dog outsmart a human and I've known some pretty amazing non verbal aspies. The way we measure intelligence often poses a problem.

Yeah, I think the "highly intelligent" part should be considered independantly. I always thought L was on the spectrum because of his interest in lining up objects (stacking creamer cups), spinning in his chair, phenomenal focus (during which he would fall asleep in an upright position) and handling objects by the extreme edges. His successor "Near" as well because of the stacking/aligning objects and frequent hair twisting/twirling. Highly intelligent and autistic, not necessarily because of it. It's an important distinction because it's unfair to make people think they have to be an astrophysicist just because they're somewhere on the spectrum. "Rantiness" aside, I 'ed the Death Note series.