battle of the labels: gifted and AS/HFA/ADHD/NVLD/etc.

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I'm still working on getting a formal diagnosis, but I had no idea that being "gifted" or not was part of the process... Is it? Do they label people as "gifted AS" and just plain normal "AS"? That seems...awkward.

My IQ is 134 but I've never thought of myself as gifted. When I was younger I thought the normal being 100 must be a lie to make everyone feel better.
My boyfriend's IQ is 146 though, which I do think is pretty impressive. He was happy with it because his father's is a little lower lol (142, I think?).

*sighs*


It sure would be nice to find a community of *non-gifted* Aspies/NLD-ers.

Based upon the posters on WP, one might easily be led to believe *non-gifted* ones don't exist.

I don't fit in here or anywhere else. Don't fit in with the Down syndrome folks, don't fit in with other NLD-ers/Aspies, don't fit in with NT's, etc....

*shakes head*

I was been labeled as "gifted" at some moment when I was a child, but it seem it didn't lived up to my adulthood. I was said to be like autism without been it at 11 or 12 years old. i was discovered asperger a few years later.

I second that

I've had 3 tests: 136 (age 6), 171 (age 12) and 126 (age 22). I function like someone in the moderate MR range, though, on all things non-academic. I was labeled "gifted" at age 6 and diagnosed with autism at age 20, though I was diagnosed/labeled with a ton of things in between which were attempting to diagnose the autism but missed it.

I am glad to see that one person at least agrees with me here.


I could do without the predicatable and demeaning lectures about the "grass always seeming greener on the other side", "being careful what I wish for", "accepting the things I cannot change", "finding my niche" (<which doesn't seem to exist and believe me, i've looked), etc.....ad nauseum.

They are demeaning because they imply that the person offering them has some sort of special objective wisdom which I lack.

It's quite easy for billionaires to tell those in abject poverty why money ain't all that great.

Ditto for those with exceptional intellectual gifts. Ask either if they would be willing to live in abject poverty or with intellectual disabilities and they may sing a different tune.


Needless to say.... intelligence, innate talents, etc....cannot be given away, so unlike billionaires, we can hardly tell anyone to "put their intellect where their mouth is".

Last time I checked....there weren't too many millionaires or billionaires giving away all their fortunes to live a life of grinding poverty.

Including the ones who vexatiously cluck about money not being all that important. You know...the type of rich a**hat who waxes poetic about the "insignificance" of money in comparison to the ineffable beauty of the moon or something This sort of false modesty is stomach-churning and it may fool Oprah Winfrey's fans, but it doesn't fool me.
The "best things in life" might be free for these types...but someone else is paying for them.

Oh sure....people like Oprah give away a few million here...and a few million there. Then they blow the trumpets of their "good deeds" and all the tiresome clods in this society canonize them. So if money REALLY isn't that important to people like her, why doesn't she at least give away all of it except for maybe two million dollars to last her for the rest of her life? Considering her age, she could STILL be considered fairly "well-off" even compared to most Americans. Jesus himself realized all this over 2000 years ago. I will give that mythical scarecrow credit for many things in spite of whether he actually existed as an ordinary person or not. One of them being his miraculous ability to call human beings on their bull***t.

Since all of this sort of disingenous nonsense is self-evident to me at least....not much more needs to be said about it.

However....i'll bet dollars to Charlie Gordon's donuts that if intelligence was something that could be given away like money, you wouldn't see too many geniuses who claim "it's not that important" giving much of it away to live like the low IQ version of the aforementioned fictional character.

Some people just like to pretend to be holy and humble. After all....the Judeo-Christian ethic, even it's resonance among the secular, demands nothing less. It's amazing such people are still being taken seriously in a society as sophisticated and jaded as our own.

Eh...the difference between giving away all your money and giving away all your IQ points is that money has nothing to do, really, with who you are. IQ measures something (however imperfectly) about how you think. If I were to give away my "intelligence," I would be a different person. That sort of loss of identity is scary. And while there are things about how my brain works that I am ashamed of, and would like to change, there are also things I really appreciate. But then again, I'm not making an Oprah-style hypocritical statement, either.

It is weird to hear one of the self-proclaimed 130+ IQ-ers being jealous of the "gifted," but I guess we're working from different definitions. ::shrug:: I don't see any contradiction between high IQ and a crippling learning disability, but I also don't think "gifted" is the same as "high achiever." Like someone said earlier, the dropout rates for high IQ kids are ridiculously high, and to be honest, I can see why these kids would want to drop out.

Rather than write a dozen different comments, I'll try to reply to everyone here!

@Anbuend: Y'know, I'm not surprised you were a "gifted kid"...this'll sound weird, but your writing style sounded that way. Wow, college at 14...that's intense! Seems like it would take a lot of emotional maturity to handle.

@Poke: What is DDA?

@Wendigopsychosis: AFAIK, "gifted," like autism, is still associated primarily with kids and a neuropsych who works with adults would probably just label you AS, but I'm not sure.

@Book_noodles: "They don't mind the 100% test scores, but they do mind what they call "fidgeting" and my inability to function in a work group, and how difficult it is for me to transition activies. They become angry when I look disconnected and they "don't care" if I'm actually listening, they just want me to "sit up and look at them."
Wow, they really don't get it, do they? Reading between the lines of what people have been saying, it seems like people like happymusic are rare.

@LipstickKiller and @Poopylungstuffing:
"Being brainy was the one thing I knew I could do growing up."
"my "above average" intelligence was one small positive thing I could cling to when it seemed like every other aspect of my being was flawed."
OMG, this. I COMPLETELY identify.

@Horus:
1. "Billions of dollars and all the "good looks", loving family/friends, etc....in the world are absolutely worthless IMO compared to the intellectual gifts of an Einstein, Hawking, or Beethoven."
Um, I don't know about anyone else here, but I'm not the second coming of Einstein, Hawking, or Beethoven, AFAIK.

2. "Based upon the posters on WP, one might easily be led to believe *non-gifted* ones don't exist."
Well, this thread in particular would tend to attract "gifted" posters. I bet if you started a thread for non-gifted members you'd get at least as many people, just based on statistical likelihood.

3. It would be interesting to see if any other NLD-ers have performed "especially poorly" on the category tests and if these same NLD-ers also "complain of having memory problems".
You just came up with a great idea for a psych study. If I had my own lab and funding, I would run it.

4. I'm still thinking over what you're saying about the fimbria and the hippocampus. This is actually new information for me, so anything I say at this point would be a guess. Would it comfort you at all to know that these are really good questions?
I don't really identify with the "complex and novel" problem at all, although I supposedly have the same diagnostic label, because these are the only things I remember well (this is probably the "gifted" making up for overall not-so-stellar memory). If it's arbitrary, like a time, date, or random fact, I'm more likely than not to forget it. But just because something doesn't apply to me personally doesn't mean it's not true in general...

I agree, the "you gifted people" sorts of remarks seem strange. Especially from someone whose most recent IQ is higher than mine (94 is above the borderline range), yet remarks that everyone else on the thread makes it seem as if everyone on the spectrum is gifted. (When if I count as making it seem that way then they surely do too considering they also had at least one gifted level IQ.) Can it be on the basis of academics? Nope, I failed spectacularly at even getting an associates degree. On the basis of life skills? No, I would die with the lack of support they have. Memory? Probably not, I think we may be about even on memory despite possessing very different profiles. (I scored on the Weschler Memory Scales consistently in what would be the MR range if it were IQ. Yet I have a single "peak of ability" in memory that the tests don't measure -- if you trigger a memory then it is unusually accurate. But it has to be triggered just the right way and otherwise my memory seems awful. Which seems like a mirror image of what was being described.)

So I would think that if I count as making it look like everyone here is gifted, then surely the poster who complained about this would count as doing the exact same thing. Either that or I am taking a generalization too literally and he didn't mean me. But the "I have it worse than you even if you don't think of yourselves as fortunate" thing is a bit grating -- it's not like you know the exact life situations or actual practical intellectual skills of anyone else on this thread, and it's not like some of the people who say the tested as gifted even know if they still would or not. There just seems to be this assumption that everyone who ever tested as gifted must be immeasurably more competent than... someone else who once tested as gifted. Ever hear of comparing your insides to everyone's outsides?

Last edited by anbuend on 02 May 2010, 10:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Well....keep in mind I only scored beyond 130 on one out of the six IQ tests i've had. And I scored as low as 94 on another. Beyond this one test, there is no reason whatsoever to believe i'm gifted at anything. I certainly don't see a contradiction between high IQ and a crippling learning disability either. My IQ scores have generally been high enough and I do believe my LD is profoundly crippling. But again....I think that the memory problems are the very worst and most uncommon aspects of my learning disability. I think it's fair to lump my memory problems (again....assuming they as real/neurologically-based as I believe them to be) in with my learning disability. After all...memory is just as critical, if not more so in some ways, to learning as actual comprehension and conceptual thinking is. We all know plenty of gifted people who were underachievers. I just happen to be a non-gifted person who is an underachiever (<to say the least).

I'm not gifted. Nowhere near gifted. In fact I'm so non-gifted I shudder at the word.
Instead of 'not fitting in' why not think of yourself as unique? That's what I do.

anbuend wrote:

I just want to make sure we're on the same page here. My most recent IQ test yielded full scale score of 143. I obtained a score of 94 on the second test I had in my life at 23. I know 94 is above the borderline range....the borderline range is between 71-85. Nonetheless.... 94 is considered low average. Now I certainly mean no disrespect here anbuend, but it SEEMS like you're contradicting yourself here a bit. I am pretty sure you're not and i'm probably wrong, it just SEEMS like you are. Thus...I hope you can clarify your position here after I explain what I mean and here goes.

You have said before that an IQ score only indicates how well you can do on an IQ test at a given time and little else. I would be the last one to disagree with that. So with this in mind, surely you would expect me to deny any "giftedness"on my part since my IQ test (notice I used the singular "test" since my IQ was above 130 on only one out of the six tests i've had in my life) is the ONE and ONLY shred of evidence I have which would suggest i'm "gifted". Again...both you and I would agree that this doesn't qualify as credible evidence to suggest *giftedness* at all. All of other the posters, including yourself who was devouring astronomy books at five, have many more reasons to believe they're gifted than their mere IQ scores.


anbeund wrote:





Did you fail because you literally could not comprehend the material? That was the case with me at least when it came to math. Furthermore...like i've told you before, my long-term semantic/episodic/procedural memory just seems to crap out beyond the prompting, triggering, or cueing that is part and parcel of exams. Thus, the memory capacity I have seems to serve me well enough if I want to get an A on an exam. But it seems like it could never serve me well enough if I actually needed to recall the material I learned in class A in order to succeed in class B. And it certainly doesn't seem like it would serve me well enough to allow me to be a history professor, lawyer, psychologist, etc....ad infinitum. Hopefully you get the implications of all this. While I can't be sure and i'll certainly allow you to speak for yourself, I kinda doubt you failed to get an associates degree for similar reasons.


anbeund wrote:




Steven Hawking would likely die too with the lack of support his own have. I can't imagine anyone claiming Hawking isn't gifted. Sure it depends on your definition of *giftedness* and it seems like you and I have very different definitions of that term. Mine is not "right" and your own is not "wrong". I am simply sorting apples here and you are processing oranges.


anbeund wrote:



At this point...it's really hard for me to be confident in terms of anything I believe about my memory, so I can't make too many comments about this. I know i've told you many things about my memory before, (including my own WMS results) so i'd prefer to avoid redundancy here. If you want me to refresh your memory about my own grain-of-salt theories in regards to my own memory , just ask and i'll be happy to do so.


anbeund wrote:




I would appreciate it if you would expand upon this a bit. I was under the impression that alot of these neuropsych memory tests like WMS DO trigger memory. Alot of them don't seem all that much different than a million exams we all had in school including many of the questions on the SAT/ACT. For example, you are asked to read a paragraph or two from a story and then 30 minutes later you are asked questions about what you read. I would define such questions as one type of a "trigger". But I guess we are again defining these things differently. How would you define a trigger/cue/prompt? Also, could you elaborate on your statement about a memory needing to be triggered in just the right way? What exactly is "just the right way" for you?....i'm just curious.

anbeund wrote:




Refer to my remarks in the second paragraph of this post. At least you have SOME indication that you might be gifted in terms of how I am defining giftedness. Hopefully my definition is clear to you by not and if not, i'm basically just talking about
raw intellectual capacity in all of it's myriad forms. The ability to play a musical instrument well. The ability to master higher mathematics or a foreign language. The ability to retain, recall and comprehend what you've read and heard about science, philosophy, history, politics and any given subject in the world. The ability to aquire and retain computer skills. The ability to construct log cabins, work on automobiles, etc......ad infinitum. Simply put....the things most people associate with intelligence and/or brain-based innate talent or skill. You were reading astronomy books at five. I can't even REMEMBER what I was doing at five but I can certainly assure you I wasn't reading much beyond the"The little engine that could".... if even that.


anbeund wrote:





Well...I can understand why you might find this a bit grating. But I would hope you could likewise understand how my perspective might cause me to find a few other things a bit grating. If another human being happens to possess something which I do not possess yet desire above all other things in existence, I am going to view them as more fortunate than myself IN THAT RESPECT. And what other "respect" would be all that meaningful to me if it's either a lesser desire or no desire at all? For example, I have no significant physical handicaps (if I may use this term for the sake of clarity and simplicity....I realize alot of people frown upon it, though I don't know if you're one of them) whatsoever. I can walk, talk, see, hear, etc.....Nonetheless....I would gladly trade places with Steven Hawking without even thinking twice. Now you may say that I have no idea what he goes through and you'd be quite correct...I don't. But no matter what, Hawking seems far more content with his own limitations than I am with mine. Furthermore, I think I know myself well enough to know that I would be at least comparatively and equally content with his limitations so long as I had his obvious gifts. This may sound rather presumptuous to you and if so, i'm afraid that can't be helped. I know who I am to some goodly extent. I know what I value and cherish and I know what my priorities are. I really don't see what so wrong with my priorities either. The physical things in life simply never meant nearly as much to me as the mental/intellectual ones. Thus...I think it might be a bit presumptous for anyone to admonish me by saying that I ought to be careful what I wish for. Those who would do so seem to be implying that i'm some self-benighted individual and i'd frankly find that a bit demeaning. I know very well what I wish for and all the same, I know very well what is of lesser or no concern to me. That's not to say i'd be overjoyed with Hawking's limitations.

I'd just be willing to trade my mental/intellectual limitations for his own physical ones. Hopefully you can understand and appreciate my point of view here and if not, i'm afraid I can't apologize for it. I would think no less of you if you can't and i'm sure you wouldn't care if I did in any case.


anbuend wrote:




Again....i'm sorry if I gave you the wrong impression but I wasn't basing any of this on anyone's IQ scores. I can't take IQ tests much more seriously than I take astrology. That's not to say I think they indicate NOTHING about SOME people's cognitive potential. I just think they say little or nothing about alot of other people's said potential, especially where non-neuroptypicals are concerned. Without going into much further detail, let's just say I have alot of mixed feelings about IQ tests and leave it at that. So IQ tests aside, I was basing this on what others have demonstrated, or at least suggested, about their own cognitve abilities in the world beyond the IQ test. My own such demonstrations/suggestions are simply light years removed from their own. I can assure you I was far more struck by your stated ability to devour astronomy books a five rather than what your IQ tests suggested about your abilities at roughly the same age.

Mosaicofminds wrote:

No. Mastering calculus to the point that I could at least PASS the class would comfort me. Mastering guitar to the point where most professional guitarists would at least define me as "good" would comfort me. Learning and remembering as much as alot of WP-er's know about computers, science, history, economics, etc...ad infinitum would comfort me. I could go on forever, but i'll spare you as i'm confident you get my meaning.

To my mind, it's all about one's priorities in life pensieve. There is simply no substitute for some things so far as i'm concerned. I PERSONALLY value intelligence and brain-based skills/talents beyond anything else in life. That is not to say I couldn't marry someone who lacked intelligence or that I think any less of people who do. It's just something I personally cherish and I always have. Thus...i've been denied of the very thing which meant more to me than anything else. Hence my life is meaningless to me and i'm ashamed of myself. Like the Japanese warrior who failed in battle, I would end it if I only could. But since I can't... I might as well see what I can do to improve my brain power even if all hope is against me. I have nothing better to do and nothing else to lose. What in god's name am I going to do as an alternative? Sit on the stupid beach and rot? Hang out with the few friends I have and do nothing worthwhile? Engage in the crude, animalistic and wholly unsatisfying pursuit of "getting laid"? Or if I had actually had money.... travel to some tropical island and stare at rainforest-enshrouded mountain for a few days? Work at some menial, mind-numbing job I despise only to be ridiculed by a bunch of NT's? Should I go volunteer at a soup kitchen or something when such a thing would only depress me even more than I already am? I'll tell you exactly what I want to do. First, I want to find out precisely what is wrong with my brain once and for all. Then I want to fix it by all means available and necessary. Since I doubt i'll be able to fix much of anything neurologically-based, i'm just hoping it's alot less severe than i've always believed it is. And finally, depending on the results of the aforementioned and what, if anything, I can do about them....i'd like to go back to college, improve my p**s-poor guitar skills, become a better writer, etc....all the way to omniscience. The way I see it....happiness must first come from within before it can come from without. And intelligence/brain-based skills/talents are the only "within" sources of happiness that mean anything to me. God knows you people must think i'm insane, evil, megalomanical, etc....

But in all reality, I don't see how i'm expecting or asking for anything out of the ordinary here. I'm only asking for the same thing billions of intelligent, talented and skilled human beings seem to take for granted. The ability to do anything they set their minds to with some reasonable and obvious limitations of course. To me....that is the crux of freedom and self-empowerment.

I just express myself in very bizarre and idiosyncratic ways which i'm fully aware of when i'm on "the outside looking in" so to speak. But there's alot I don't understand about the way I express myself too.



In any case..if your own methods work for you...more power to you.

Here is the post by the NVLD-er psychologist I was referring to in an earlier post on this thread. Many of his issues (though i'm about as athlectic as a duck) sound very similar to my own. He somehow overcame them at least well enough to get a PhD in psychology and work as a practicing psychologist. The man is an inspiration to me and his post brought tears to my eyes I really need to get the Lucas book he's referring to here.

dr. rick hughes says:

The only reason I went there about IQ scores was that you at one point cited your recent IQ as reason you couldn't be gifted. And given my most recent IQ was 85, that seemed strange to me. Personally I don't actually believe in the category of gifted that much, but you seem to, so I was going through all the areas that could possibly seem to be what you meant.

I said I was reading adult-level books at the age of five. I mean reading as in decoding. I am hyperlexic, and I am a very classic stereotypical hyperlexic -- I actually comprehended very little language at that age, including written language. I could map the patterns of language but barely knew what words were for. Hyperlexia of that type is about an attraction to the written word, and a decoding of the sounds of the written word, but severe deficits in comprehension of both spoken and written language. It's a learning disability that has more in common with dyslexia than it sounds like from the names.

Even today, when I read a book I not only have to look up words all the time, but struggle to put together meaning from the words. I find my eyes going down a page as if I am reading, but not taking in the actual content. Or doing the decoding without the language processing. But I am unable to read slowly. So what I end up having to do to squeeze any meaning out of it at all is to read it over, and over, and over. Each time I read, it's much like a new book to me. I have real trouble retaining knowledge of what is in a book, which is one among many reasons that I am unable to summarize a book usually. The one area that I do remember from the book is combinations of phrases and patterns between them. And that's not entirely consciously retained, I just notice that my writing later contains the phrases from the book.

The trouble with college is a large number of problems I have regarding different academics-related skills. See, what happened in grade school was I basically went into cognitive overdrive because my IQ resulted in being placed in classes that were too advanced for me. But even if I did badly on tests they would assume I was just being careless and advance me anyway. I was therefore basically BSing my way through school through brute force. When I turned about 12, it all came back to haunt me because I was totally out of my depth. I began to do worse and worse in academic areas. And people said "She's gifted. she must be acting out from boredom." And ended up skipping me forward and forward until I crashed hard and that's when I was diagnosed after a suicide attempt. That's just so you know what was going on academically.

So okay. When I took college classes... how do I even describe this. Okay... the default setting for my brain contains little to no of what I'd call abstract/intellectual thought for lack of a better term. My default state is to take in my environment, perhaps notice patterns about what I take in, but not to do what most people (including most people with intellectual disabilities) seem to do. Most people seem to build towers and other structures of thought and then live in those structures. In my case I can with great effort build a structure that's wobbly and falls into oblivion the moment I stop concentrating.

College requires building those structures. I couldn't sustain it. I would just shut down, or melt down. I remember trying to write a paper on the Passover Seder for my world religion class. Simple paper. I ended up trying harder and harder to do the kind of thought required, getting virtually nothing, and then screaming and pounding my head so hard a friend intervened and then I was so confused (and I feel terrible) that I lashed out at what I perceived was this "thing" grabbing my arms and hurt her. Because at that point I was only capable of perceiving sensory data, I couldn't put meaning into it.

So my single biggest problem was my inability to sustain both that kind of mental tower-building, and also the equivalent problem with interpreting what came in through my senses. How do you comprehend an abstract idea when all your brain wants to do is sort sensory information into patterns? How do you even get to understanding the input when it just sounds like chickens clucking or running water, or just looks like squiggles on paper (which might sometimes map to sounds but the sounds are just more chickens clucking)? And how do you force a brain to do the high-level stuff college demands when your brain is balking at the "simple" stuff?

So yes, being unable to comprehend the material was a huge problem. Comprehension, especially comprehension based in language, symbol, or anything requiring mental tower-building, has always been one of my biggest problems. (And the tower-building is present even in what people consider simple concepts. Because it's the fundamental way most typical people and even many autistic people think.)

There were a lot of relatively smaller problems that all added up to huge problems too. The memory issues I described were one kind. Test questions did not always trigger the answer. I'd better explain how this works for me.

So... memory is like every other facet of life for me -- pretty good if triggered. Pretty terrible otherwise. To me a question (and certainly not the stuff on the Weschler Memory Scale) is not a trigger usually. Quite often a question just leaves my brain stalling. What helps trigger my memory is some fairly random object, event, someone's words at just the right spot. Often if someone makes a false statement about something that is a far better trigger than a question is. Don't ask why, I don't know. And even that doesn't work all the time. Similarly when I needed to climb something once my body almost completely froze up. But I was able to lean forward enough to fall, and the fall triggered my legs into motion so I could climb. If I try to just stand up I can't always do it, but I have a better chance if someone holds an object out of reach and tells me to touch it.

That discrepancy exists for memory and also for language, thought, and movement. Everything has to operate off a chain of triggers. Your post this time was easier to respond to because of the number of false assumptions in them, which trigger me into correcting them. Correcting misconceptions may be annoying but it's easier than questions alone.

So there was the memory stuff. There was the fact that I have trouble learning on demand, especially in classroom situations. If someone has me read a chapter of a book, then even if I manage to learn something from it, it's unlikely that what I learn is what the teacher wants me to learn. (This has been a lifelong issue.) Similarly I can't teach myself anything either. I mean I can't set out to learn something and then learn it. Whatever I learn is totally accidental, and totally uncontrollable, and I often don't even consciously realize I learned it until later. So for instance what I learned in linguistic anthropology class had to do with the pattern of behavior a class bully engaged in, rather than knowing the material. Even though I read and reread the material several times.

Another problem is that I have next to no recall of anything I have ever been deliberately taught in school of any kind at any age. Even school I did seemingly well in at the time. And that never helped either.

But the biggest thing by far was having to sustain mental tower-building and standard interpretation of sensory data, and comprehension of just about anything at all. That pushed my brain to the limit, and the mental towers toppled faster each tine until I had to give up because trying to do college was destroying my life.

I can't remember every topic you covered nor can I read my own writing so I don't know if I've answered every question or cleared up every misconception. My mind is trying very hard to revert to it's default state, which is devoid of standard interpretation or comprehension, devoid of standard thought, and otherwise as divorced as possible from all this stuff that makes up what most people think of as their minds. And this is just from writing one post. Getting a degree requires much more of that foreign mental state than I even possess.

That's a really high bar. I took calculus twice and failed both times (then just accepted that I will never understand calculus). I practiced guitar for 5 years but the only people who ever called me "good" were friends who had never played it themselves and then only after a couple beers (at many parties there is somebody sitting on a couch platying guitar badly as drunk people sing along, I was that person). I know far less about computers, science etc. than many WP-ers. Is the greatest difference between us that I am ok with this???? Why is happiness contingent on mastery? Why is muddling through not ok?