Asperger's difference in IQ subset scores

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If you had problems scaling you weren't processing the problem locally.

I don't think you understand what I mean by that - what the issue was was I couldn't determine whether the corners were one piece half white or one piece fully white and two half white. I couldn't determine any individual piece to start processing at. I was looking locally and I was entirely unsure of the size of what I was looking at, and that caused me to not be able to place the initial block to build from.

I'm absolutely positive that on the other ones I was doing local processing and I'm sure that on that one my issue was determining a start point and once I was able to determine the start point I only processed it locally.

I understood exactly what you meant by scaling. I don't think I explained clearly so I'll try again. The BDT consists of red and white blocks (or Black or yellow and white on other tests) and a target picture which is solid and has no separation. Local processing involves looking at the solid picture and mentally segmenting it into individual blocks. When seen as individual blocks one only has to place the actual blocks in the same relative positions as the 'blocks' in the mentally segmented picture. Because of the mental segmentation it doesn't matter where you start, middle, sides, corner are all the same and it doesn't matter how many blocks there are as long as you know how many are required to complete the picture-3x3, 4x4, 5x5, etc it's all the same. So again I'm telling you that you weren't solving it on a local level.

What you're missing here is that I'm not a visual thinker. This means that even local processing is not identical to someone who does local processing who is a visual thinker (which you seem to be assuming).

Maybe I didn't do what you require to call it local processing. You're also not understanding what I did do however and making statements that assume more knowledge than you have. (I'm sorry that this is something I find difficult to explain how I did.)

Could someone define "local processing" for me?

Local processing is a detail oriented system and has nothing to do with vidualization. I'm not interested in arguing with you. If it had occured to me that you might take it personally I wouldn't have replied but such is AS.

Rascal I'm confused. Are you saying the block test has nothing to do with visualization?

http://www.icn.ucl.ac.uk/dev_group/ufrith/documents/Shah%20and%20Frith,%20Why%20do%20autistic%20individuals%20show%20superior%20performance%20on%20the%20block%20design%20task%20copy.pdf

I thought this was very interesting. There have been many studies done on this and the more current ones use fmri and other imaging to see which parts of the brain are used in performing these tasks. I don't know if you'll want to read the whole thing but I would recommend it. What you are looking for is on the 1st paragraph of page 2.

P.S. I love cats.

Last edited by Rascal77s on 12 Dec 2011, 6:01 am, edited 1 time in total.

Yes I'm saying that the reason autistics do well in BDT is because of a difference in visual perception, this is not the same as visualization. The superiority of ASD on the BDT is not due to accuracy as NT scored similarly in accuray, rather it is due to the significantly faster times of the ASD. When the picture is presegmented (rather than unsegmented as is normal for the test) the difference between the NT group and the ASD group goes away. This shows that the ASD group is segmenting the picture unconciously while the NT group requires active processing for the segmentation (hence the extra time needed). People with ASD do very well on visual search tasks (hidden objects) for exactly the same reason, hidden objects don't require visualization only visual detail scanning (local processing).

I think where I lost people was in saying "mental segmentation". I meant that it's a process that occurs unconciously during these tasks in a large portion of the ASD population rather than a concious process. Sorry if I made it even more confusing

BTW your name made me hungry. Don't know about the sandwich thing though Maybe halibut with lemon and capers

More or less I was told here by helpful and comforting WP members that being diagnosed with PDD-NOS is not the end of the world, but it felt rather discomforting and aggravating to me to get such a vague and less acknowledged (popular, or whatever) DX.

It seems that many people DX'd with AS might as well be DX'd with PDD-NOS on the basis of having lower VIQ than PIQ (just as I was), though there's apparently no consensus on this.

However, I will look into more details of my assessment, including the IQ test and its subscales.

I did very well on the BDT. The person who administered it to me could hardly start and stop the watch, I was so quick. I saw the whole picture in my mind, and arranged and turned the blocks without thinking of a starting point or anything like that. OTOH, I think I scored average at verbal tasks and low at tasks requiring (numeric) working memory.

And I'm saying I did do a detail oriented approach and you're just telling me I didn't because it wasn't identical to yours. That's what's bothering me is that you're telling me that I didn't do something that I did do when you have no way to know what I did and didn't do. You're trying to tell me you know how I think better than I do.

Scale messed with me on one because the way it was built meant that scale was completely necessary to processing the block design. You could not actually determine the difference between "this is made including solid-color blocks" and "this is made only with half-colored blocks" without the sense of size of the things in the pictures and taking the number of blocks total into account.

In that one it was required to process the whole image to get a scale to allow me to process the smaller sections. In the other ones I didn't need to process the whole image. There were non-local dependencies in that pattern.

Other than that, my slow downs didn't have to do with processing time, they only had to do with physically manipulating the blocks; that's why I had commented that a high score is not required for local processing.

It was mentioned in my report that hand-eye coordination was part of what being was tested.