Study of fluid intelligence in autism spectrum disorders

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It is a diagnostic criteria. You can't be diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome if you score below 70 on an IQ test. There is a full range of IQ scores for people who have an autism but not Aspergers diagnosis, but an IQ score <70 disallows an Aspergers diagnosis so the average IQ of course is higher.

For people who score >70 on an IQ test, the main criteria between an autism diagnosis and an Aspergers diagnosis seems to be language acquisition (or doctors' opinion). For people who score <70, there can be no Aspergers diagnosis...autism only.

No, there's a minimum IQ for Asperger's and you have to have no speech delay. There's a requirement that you not have anything wrong with you, and a requirement that you be impaired, which confuses me. Also, Asperger's is overdiagnosed; you're also supposed to not meet the criteria for any other autism spectrum disorder, but the diagnostic criteria for autism don't require a speech delay or mention anything about IQ. The way Asperger's is treated, though, it's the diagnosis given to everyone who's happy, successful or smart. Or even who just doesn't appear ret*d. The idea that your diagnosis could change from autism to Asperger's because you speak normally as an adult is incorrect; the speech delay criterion is based on the speed with which you develop speech in early childhood.

That wasn't my point, did you even READ what i said?? i just mentioned that part for people who are unaware AND to draw the contrast with the results on the Raven's test.

I have taken a professionally-administered Raven's on only one of the six neuropsychological evaluations i've undergone.

I scored right on 50%-centile on it. My verbal IQ scores (and usually my FSIQ scores) on every WAIS i've taken have been at least a bit higher and far higher on several tests (high as 155 on VIQ and FSIQ 143 on the WAIS I took in 2006). My PIQ scores have been as high as 111 on the 2006 WAIS and as low as 79 on the most recent WAIS this past June. My PIQ score was 82 on the WAIS I took in 1993 and it was 102, 100 and 94 respectively on all the other tests.


I have also taken the Raven's-like tests online and I scored a bit over 100 a few times and in the low average range a few other times.

Now of course, i've also taken the Matrix Reasoning subtest on WAIS. This subtest is supposedly modeled on the RPM and my scores have been all over the place on that one. I've scored as high as the 91st%-centile (superior) and as low as low average on another.


I've always been told I have excellent abstract reasoning ability. I feel there's a distinction between verbal abstract reasoning and non-verbal abstract reasoning and as for the latter, I think i'm pretty weak in that area.

I recently took a Waston-Glaser Critical Thinking test and scored in the 97%-centile on it. This test is completely verbal however and I had to take it at a career/vocational assessment center OVR sent me to. The examiner told me my score on this test was the highest he'd ever seen.



I'm terrible when it comes to mechanical reasoning though and i'm lucky if I can screw in a lightbulb properly (slight exaggeration ....but not much really). I suppose this is fairly common with those of us who have a Non-Verbal Learning Disability. I have never been officially diagnosed with AS or any other disorder which is considered an ASD. I have been told I fit most, if not all, of the characteristics of NLD/NVLD though. This has been clearly stated in the reports of almost every neuropsych eval i've taken.

Since NLD is not an officially accepted mental disorder, i've always been dx-ed with either LD-NOS or Mathematics Disorder on the neuropsych evals i've taken which yielded an LD dx at all. The one in 2006 did and I can only surmise this was because the neuropsychologist felt ALL my scores were too high to warrant an LD dx of any sort.

Again....I scored 111 on PIQ, 155 on VIQ and these combined resulted in an FSIQ of 143. If the aforementioned was the neuropsych's reasoning for not dx-ing me with an LD on this eval, he was quite ignorant of NLD/NVLD, LD's in general and how/when they should be diagnosed.

Anouther interesting test comparasion is the standard IQ and the non verbal IQ. I scored very low (moderate mental retardation) on the standard IQ, but scored 135-ish on the non verbal 6 months later when I was 8 years old. This one doctor I had was a neuro-liguistics who specialized in autism, and he said that autism is the mother of all language based learning disabilities. And that is what he believed autism is.

Anyway has anyone else had a formal non verbal IQ, v's the standard IQ? Any differences?

BTW, the online non verbal IQ test is very confusing and can cause overstimulation thus decreased score. The test I took was a formal test called "the lighter"

Okay i went ahead and did an online version i found of the Standard Progressive Matrices on some spanish website, the results were : 55/60 correct, 90th percentile, the site claims this equals an IQ of 130? i have gotten around 130 on other tests of problem solving and reasoning ability too, and lower on tests that relied more on verbal intelligence, hmmz.

Have been able to secure access to the second paper on intelligence in autistics, here are the results in the paper : "Discrepancies between the autistic children’s WISC-III Full
Scale IQs and their Raven’s Matrices scores occurred throughout
the entire WISC-III range, as illustrated in Figure 3a. For
example, no autistic child scored in the ‘‘high intelligence’’
range on the WISC-III, whereas a third of the autistic children
scored at or above the 90th percentile on the Raven’s Matrices.
Only a minority of the autistic children scored in the ‘‘average
intelligence’’ range or higher on the WISC-III, whereas the
majority scored at or above the 50th percentile on the Raven’s
Matrices. Whereas a third of the autistic children would be
called ‘‘low functioning’’ (i.e., in the range of mental retardation)
according to the WISC-III, only 5% would be so judged according
to the Raven’s Matrices."

for adult autistics : "Similar results were observed when the autistic and nonautistic
adults’ scores on the Raven’s Progressive Matrices andWAIS-III
were compared (see Fig. 2b). The autistic adults’ Raven’s Progressive
Matrices scores (M 5 83.30 percentile, SD 5 19.26)
were, on average, more than 30 percentile points higher than
theirWAIS-III scores (M550.38 percentile, SD530.57; prep5
.986, d 5 1.29)."
very interesting stuff, don't you think? i think it sort of settles the idea that autistics are only good at low-level intelligence, while this proves the opposite, since the Raven's are tests of high-level, general cognitive abilities, and are considered THE test of general intelligence in the literature. so, autism starts to look more and more like "just" a social and linguistic disability in the majority of cases, not intellectual disability.

It makes me wonder what exactly these two tests are measuring. Clearly the word "intelligence" is far too vague since they are both supposedly measuring it yet coming up with wildly different results on the same people.

They measure the ability to take IQ tests, of course.

What I'm really asking is why is that ability non-transferable between tests? What is different about what the two tests are measuring?

No it's not about "general intelligence" being impaired, it's about normal IQ tests being heavily language-biased.

Aha! That's what I was looking for. Since I haven't taken either of the tests (and was not allowed to see the questions of the test my daughter was given) I was unclear about what makes them different from each other. So I wondered why people would do so consistently poorly on one test and so consistently well on the other test. If one has a language bias and the other doesn't, that makes sense.

general intelligence is in psychometrics theory defined as a general measurement of overal cognitive ability, independent of the domain being measured, and influencing the results of any test of any domain to some extent (suggesting autistics have a severe disability in the language department), and this raven's progressive matrics is estimated to be the most accurate measurement of this overarching cognitive aptitude.. so in short, only 5% of SEVERE autistics have a general intelligence impairment that is in the range of mental retardation, higlighting once again that the asperger/autism distinction is solely based on language and communication ability, NOT overal intellectual ability like the IQ distinction in the past made us believe. I would advocate that this test be used on ALL autistics and ESPECIALLY those who are close to or completely non-verbal ,as were the subjects of this study (forgot to mention that part earlier..)

You made me curious to take the test.
I scored in the average (between 70 and 95). I'm an NT and I was considered a gifted one as a student.
Fluid intelligence is important but it isn't all, other things are important as self confidence and stress resisitance. You can have achievements in your life even if you are not a genius.
This is the issue with you: you was requested to show you're not ret*d since you were children. I was supposed to be smart without evidences.
That's not a good way to educated individuals.
My son is autistic and he is only 3 years old. He just started to be tested and he will go on for years. I don't know how to avoid him to loose his self-esteem.
I mean that if people shows to think you're ret*d you will think the same.

Here's a link to a fairly easy Raven test I found online, in case anyone is interested in taking it:
http://www.clipsite.com.ar/HOME/Salud/Test/Raven/

I got the following results:

Nombre: alex
Edad: 27
Respuestas correctas: 58/60
Percentil: 95
Cociente Intelectual: Muy superior al término medio
Rango: I
IQ: 136

Alex, that is THE standard raven's test which was used in the aforementioned studies, there is only one form of the standard matrices and then there is the advanced matrices (you need a near perfect score on the advanced matrices to get into the triple 9 society (99.9th percentile), the problem with the standard one obviously is that it can't measure beyond a certain range of ability. you got 3 more right than me and 5 percentile points higher, hehe.