VIQ>PIQ?

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When I was 6, VIQ>PIQ. (Very high>high-average)

When I was 13, VIQ<PIQ. (High-average<very high)

Most of my memory's visual, so fk it, PIQ>VIQ for all I care...

I had my IQ tested in fifth grade. I tested as having a VIQ of 127, and a PIQ of 75 . The guy who was assessing me said that he'd never seen anything like that, and didn't know what to make of it. This was in 1992, two years before AS was added to the DSM.
The following year, I was given another, abbreviated assessment. I was on an IEP as I had been diagnosed with ADD, and other learning disabilities. They had decided to declassify me from all special services and throw away my IEP. I was managing okay academically with a lot of support from my Mom. The fact that I barely spoke in school, had no friends, and was a favorite target for bullies was irrelevant. I was moving on to Junior High, and it was just too much paperwork to transfer everything over. Before that could be done, they had to go through the formality of this abbreviated assessment. My mom was told that my PIQ had definitely improved, but they couldn't say how much, as they hadn't administered the entire test.
I know that to this day, I still do much better with reading, writing and talking about things and am not as successful when it comes to actually *doing* things. Thus, there is undoubtedly still a gap in favor of VIQ.

Wow .......so the system worked really well for you!! ( sarcastic)

My IQ is very similar to yours.....I was diagnosed with NVLD (before being diagnosed with AS)

I believe I'm an undiagnosed aspie. I've been diagnosed with ADHD, but think it to be asperger's, given my lack of social ability, anxiety, and was thought by a school psychologist to have selective mutism at the age of 16. When I took the wics (III) I was about twelve. It was included in a complete psychological evaluation. On the IQ test I got a 22 point gap between my non-verbal score which was a 111 IQ, and my verbal score which was only at a 89 IQ. Though the report did state that my much poorer verbal ability could of effected certain nonverbal tasks, hense overal performance IQ. However I did signifigently excell on the block construction [(16) 130 IQ], and object essambly [(14) 120 IQ] tasks, and I'm surprised I was not diagnosed with asperger's, or even had brought up the possibility of it. The report even stated that I had poor eye contact throughout the evaluation.

Last edited by jgann on 19 Feb 2011, 3:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

PIQ is the one with the blocks, right? I completed the first designs before she'd even started the clock

Tbh, I think the only way you can get the other diagnosis is to talk to your psych and to say that although you have a diagnosis of ADHD you feel that your symptoms are perhaps more closer to those of AS and ask why they think you have ADHD and not AS. I know this is what I should do as I have the opposite dilemma but I don't feel confident to do it. I think it is the only way to find out though.

I feel the opposite that although I am fairly sure I have AS as I didn't even know I was supposed to make eye contact until I was 17, and I have never experienced sexuality and have an unusual intelligence profile and have always had difficulty with social skills and relationships. I think all my other issue mask the fact that I may also have ADHD. I feel that a combination of AS and ADHD would more explain the way I am.

Also I don't understand how psychs diagnose ADHD? I think Aspergers is more testable than ADHD but even so are ADHD and Aspergers just variations of the same thing, I have heard that there is a 70% overlap?

I have always felt a bit uncertain about my gender, I think because I don't seem to experience sexuality. I think that side of things all goes along with AS too!

Such fun :@

PIQ is a summary of several tests, including the block one. (Just like VIQ is a summary of several tests.) I had the same experience with the first design on the block test, interesting to hear it from someone else as last time I told someone they told me that was impossible and that I was lying.

Does "aspie" on this poll mean AS, or autism in general. How would I answer if I'm diagnosed with autism and have PIQ>VIQ?

I think things like brain plasticity really cloud the picture of what's going on mechanically in people's minds. How things work, and what's shown on measurements like IQ tests, often don't seem to match-up. I have the visual spatial deficits of NLD (no spatial ability at all), but I don't show the VIQ>PIQ discrepancy I was expecting. My PIQ is higher of the two, and high.

The guy got up to grab coffee when he gave me the last picture for the block test. I had it finished before he got out the door. I think his reaction was "um, that was fast."

Sorry I should have made that clearer...I will when/if I make other polls in the future...and will usually use ASD instead of AS or aspie (this is an old poll).......

I was actually interested just in people diagnosed with Asperger’s for this poll as one of the differences that have been identified btwn people with AS and those with Autism in terms of potential genetic and or neurological differences is that more people with AS have this pattern of higher VIQ than PIQ (by no means all....and there is conflicting evidence on this matter...not all evidence points to this difference). This pattern of cognitive deficits/ assets (good verbal/poor spatial) is associated with NLD, which is associated with right hemisphere dysfunction and white matter deficits. These same neurological correlates have also been identified in AS (although other deficits …or differences) have also been identified that are more similar to those seen in Autism. Anyways reading about this (for a research project for a 4rth year under-grad psych course) made me curious about the AS people in the WP community.

Interestingly even though I have very severe NLD (at least I did when assessed at age eight) my VIQ was 140 and my PIQ was borderline MR (or ID) range at around 70.... it was noted on my assessment( which I recently read over) that I was successful on the block design test (also that I had good visual attention to detail). My other scores on the PIQ section were incredibly low and I think the block design was the only thing that kept the score from being firmly in the MR range! I think my score was only high end of average though....it wasn't that impressive (except in comparison to my overall PIQ)…….

I have a diagnosis of AS along with the NLD btw......

well then... here's another aspie who beat the clock-clicker in the block design tests. she managed to start the clock a few times, but then she was way to slow to stop it again when i finished a few seconds after that! she gave up and told me that it probably can't be done much faster than i did.

Yes, my VIQ has been shown to be significantly higher than my PIQ by the WAIS. My VIQ is 17 points higher than my PIQ. My teachers never found NVLD/a math learning disorder in me during school, because my PIQ is in the high-average range. So, I was performing at the benchmark of 60-70% in mathematics standardized tests, as well as getting "A"s in math class. But this still angers me that I wasn't given help, because my verbal standardized test scores were consistently in the 99th percentile. It just sticks in my craw that I wasn't told I have NVLD until college, after years and years of suffering silently...

I WAS diagnosed with "Mathematics Disorder" on one of the six neuropsychological evaluations i've taken in my life.


This was in lieu the usual LD-NOS dx (Or no learning disorder/disability dx at all on the neuropsych eval I took in 2006. I guess this was because even though there was a huge 44 point discrepancy between my VIQ ((155 on the WAIS-III administered on this particular neuropsych eval)) and PIQ ((111-high average range))....the neuropsychologist felt both my scores were too high to warrant an LD diagnosis. This strongly suggests that this man, in spite of his credentials, knew nothing about how/when learning disabilities should be diagnosed and likely even less about NLD/NVLD) i've received on every other neuropsych eval i've taken aside from the one I mentioned in parentheses.

As i'm sure you know....NLD/NVLD is not a formally-recognized mental disorder per the APA/DSM so when it's suspected....an individual is dx-ed with LD-NOS or some other "legitimate" LD-related mental disorder.


Anyway....my PIQ has been in the borderline range twice, (79 and 82) the low/low-ish average range twice, (86 and 94) the average range (100 and 102) twice and the high average range (111) once.

I don't know what to make of all this for certain.....all I can do is speculate and the neuropsychologists don't seem to have any better explanations for it than I do.

Nonetheless....I do KNOW that I royally suck at all math beyond basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. That means I suck at adding, subtracting, etc.....decimals and fractions too.

Now with an enormous struggle...I get can get through "alphanumeric/symbolic" math like algebra, stats and prob, etc.....but spatial/non-verbal math like geometry and trig is virtually, if not totally, impossible for me.

I'm also pretty bad at mechanical/visual-spatial tasks...so no mystery there. I'm lucky if I can screw in a lightbulb correctly....slight exaggeration....but I doubt I could ever be an auto mechanic or something.

Like yourself....I was not told about ANY of this (and I WAS tested both in 9th grade and told my full scale IQ score was 120 by my guidance counselor, but told nothing about any gaps between VIQ/PIQ and when I was 23 at the request of OVR) until it was a bit late in the day. While I ALWAYS knew something was wrong with me neurologically/neuropsychologically speaking since I was seven, (and NOBODY....my psychologically abusive parents included....believe me ) I didn't know ANYTHING about NLD/NVLD per se until I was tested again at 28 by the University of Miami and Dr. Peter Mundy told me all about NLD/NVLD and provided me with a copy of Dr. Byron Rourke's "Non-Verbal Learning Disabilities....the Syndrome and the Model".

Speaking of that book.....I self-diagnosed myself at 14 with a nonexistent (IOW...it's never been accepted by the APA) "personality disorder" which ironically enough, Dr. Rourke mentions in his book as being a proposed disorder (by Quay in 1972) which has remarkably similar characteristics to the NLD/NVLD syndrome. He also, unsurprisingly, mentions Asperger's syndrome as another disorder which bears said characteristics to NLD/NVLD. Keep in mind that Asperger's wasn't even in the DSM (III) at that time when this book was published in 1989.

This "personality disorder" was known as "Inadequete-Immature Personality Disorder" and I located a description of it in a Random House encyclopedia I was looking thorugh at my grandfather's house in 1983....when I was only 14.

VIQ<PIQ usually means your enviroment abandoned you intellectually. At age 6, I had a VIQ>PIQ score, when the overall score was 142 (VIQ of a genius(140 & up), PIQ somewhat above average(115-130)). At age 13, I was VIQ<PIQ (116<126), overall IQ of 120. I didn't have a real challenge intellectually since 1st grade to about 9th-10th grade, because my school brainwashed pupils to neglect their parents and blindly follow the extremely non-challenging challenges. I believe I was intellectually abandoned due to being in a school with a below average average IQ (90-100).
Can it be your case?