SocOfAutism wrote:
I've researched this a little. To understand this, I think we have to go back to Asperger's and autism, instead of our current understanding of everyone being on the autism spectrum, with no separation for Asperger's.
With the old definitions, people with Asperger's score like neurotypicals on intelligence tests- mostly average (90-110), with some very bright (up to Richard Feynman type bright) and some lower (like Forest Gump).
Autistic people, and anyone with extremely high or extremely low intelligence shouldn't be using an intelligence test. If you score something like a 175 or something like a 40, that means that you are an outlier; you are so different from the type of person expected to take the test that you cannot be accounted for. You essentially belong in a different group, so that you can be measured that way. Intelligence test experts say that there's no point giving nonverbal or partially verbal autistic kids intelligence tests because the tests are so certain to be inaccurate. The same is true of adults who have thought systems and inner states that can't be measured against others because they seem to be unique.
It's like anything else with a social aspect: geared for the mediocre middle. Cut out the bottom, cut off the top and this middle slice is what reality is and all we care about and thus all we measure.
10 Jan 2016, 5:41 am
