Autistics perform better than expected on intelligence test

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That is the finding of the recently epublished paper Enhanced visual processing contributes to matrix reasoning in autism by Isabelle Soulieres, Michelle Dawson et al. The abstract is here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19530215 .

From the abstract:

If I remember reading the article correctly, it stated that we had less activation in the prefrontal cortex, and more in visual processing areas, implying that while our visual processing may be exceptional, our high-order thinking might be below average. How does this translate into intelligence?

Looks like an expansion of Dawson's earlier paper comparing autistic scores on Raven vs WAIS.

A large part of the difference is probably that most intelligence test results are very dependent on the ability to communicate.. So most autistics scores on IQ tests just don't reflect their actual intelligence. Like they always say.. if you get a particular score on a test, all it means, is that you got that particular score on a test. IQ tests are designed to measure the intelligence of people who think in "normal" ways. If someone doesn't, it's not going to be accurate. Usually an IQ score is the average of the scores of several different types of intelligence.. if those numbers are vastly different, that average just isn't going to be very descriptive. If you score 90 in one area and 160 in another area, just averaging it and trying to use that to describe the overall intelligence is going to cause more confusion than anything else.

I read this when it came out when I was in Canada. The Globe and Mail had two problems. The first one I missed, but not by much. The second I did in a flash because I recognized the pattern. The point is that autistics tend to have better pattern recognition than NTs. Many have verbal disabilities that confound IQ tests. Removing the verbal content makes the test easy for many. One man who was diagnosed as mentally ret*d scored very high on this test.