ASD and IQ tests.

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How much do they affect your score? I know that people with AS and ADHD often have have high IQ scores but I also thought that processing issues and executive function impairment could cause some trouble with taking the test. Does this mean that if someone with AS has an 1Q 140 that their score should really be considered higher than that? Should the amount of time someone is given to take the test be factored in, or is it fair to consider the speed of someone's processing ability as part of their IQ even if they have an ASD?

I think that IQ tests aren't very accurate, and they don't measure the true intelligence of those of us, on the spectrum. As a conclusion, my answer would be yes.

There's another factor for someone with IQ of 140 -- for many tests, that's the ceiling. It tends to require a special test to ascertain an exact IQ when someone is in the 160-200+ range.

How about refusing to finish the test due to distractions, both times I took it as a child? (ADHD and fire alarms don't get along. Nor did ADHD and the promise of a birthday party later that day. ) All we know is that I made the cutoff to get into a gifted program even with an incomplete test, which puts me at at least 130 at that school...but I don't know what it really is.

No, it's not "really" higher. It's simply irrelevant.

Because people with ASDs usually have widely disparate skill levels in various areas, it's impossible to tell whether your 140-IQ autistic is going to perform, in any given area, as well as an otherwise-NT individual who scored 140. He may perform like someone with an IQ of 50, or like someone with an unmeasurably high IQ. The IQ test is normed for neurotypicals; it is not very relevant for autistics.

If you have an ASD and a high IQ, it is far more likely that your "functional IQ" is lower (i.e., your average ability to do things, outside of school, is lower than the ability of the average otherwise-NT with a score of 140.) This is because it is common for people with ASDs to have delays in adaptive skills that are not present for non-autistics who have similar IQ scores. As far as adaptive skills go, I take care of myself about as well as an NT with an IQ approximately 70-80 points lower. That kind of a gap tells me the IQ test is almost completely useless for predicting my skills.

The IQ test is not connected particularly well to anything. If it predicts anything, it will weakly predict school performance, because it requires some of the same skills; but there are other skills required to do well at school, and other skills that might make up for weaknesses in the areas measured on the IQ test; so even there it's not too useful.

Basically, anything that makes you develop at a different rate or in a different order can make your IQ artificially high or low (including sometimes both within a lifetime).

For instance I learned certain elements of reading young and got a high IQ score at the age of five. But my reading skills did not improve at the rate other children's did, and I never acquired some skills, lost others, and by age fifteen was only slightly above average, and at age 22 was right on the cusp of borderline intellectual functioning. (An autistic friend -- he has an odd sense of humor -- says if I live long enough I'll go negative.) This was mostly because of differences in both rate and order of learning the sorts of things that help on tests.

Also, things like specific trouble or specific skill on certain subtests, distractibility, intense focus, narrow focus, memory problems and enhancements, and many other qualitative differences in the way we think, can affect score both up and down (sometimes at the same time).

In all of my tests I have had extreme scatter on subtests. This doesn't always translate to a huge verbal/performance split the way some people think it does though (and contrary to popular belief there are large amounts of autistic people without a huge difference between verbal and performance, and which one is higher does NOT automatically differentiate between AS and other autism). For instance on my last test my highest and lowest subscales were both in performance, making it only a little higher than verbal. But my highest score was fairly high and my lowest was near the bottom, making it a huge spread after all.

I was also a young reader (hyperlexic) and scored somewhat high at 5 and extremely high at 12. Then, at 22, I score 126, which is lower than both, because my vocabulary did not improve at the rate that was expected.

If the IQ tests went by what you're interest is then I'm sure very much that it would be very very high. So lets say you have any interest in math but not history. They ranger for math would be high. The ranger for history would be low.

In other words that IQ tests are not the best thing to go by when wanting to know how smart someone is or is not.

I was a very young reader and now I often have to skip parts of my class readings because I read more slowly than most people I know and can't always keep up with the reading load, no matter how much time I spend on it. Plus, I never learned to skim for meaning no matter how hard I tried and how many times people explained it to me. I can't skim an article -- the best I can do is read the abstract, introduction, and conclusion and ignore all the middle parts. That's "skimming" in my world.

If I have to read an academic book and don't have enough time to devote to it, I read the first two and last two pages of every chapter and find that tends to get me 80%-90% of the way to my learning goal for the class. I always *want* to read the whole book, but I just don't read that fast. I actually write faster than I read which, I'm told, is not normal at all.

All over the place over here depending on far too many factors to list. I can score ret*d to above average/high.

All over the place here too depending on factors which are still
a complete mystery to me.

I've scored "impaired" on some subtests (like object assembly) to
"very superior" on others like information and vocabulary.


My lowest FSIQ was in the low average range (94) and my highest was
in the very superior range (143).

I can't really give a yes or no answer, but this is my opinion.

There is so much info out there saying you can't give an intelligence quotient. Every time I pick up a neuroscience/psychology magazine it has something about intelligence. In my college's library there are countless books about IQ testing. So if there is this much questioning about testing the IQ of neurotypical people with no processing difficulties and need to accommodation, then I really have doubts about the accuracy of testing us that do. I read one article about why smart people make dumb mistakes...the gist of it all was that you can have super high intelligence and lack logical thinking. You can have intelligence and lack common sense, or vice versa. I didn't bother getting an IQ test when I got diagnosed, but I might just out of curiosity to see what it is.

I was told by a couple psychs that autistics usually have lower IQs. one of the rezones they didn't think I had AS because I had a high-school diploma & was never IQ tested. I think one doc said if a person has a really low IQ(I forget the number but I'd guess 17 but I could be wrong) the person can be given a diagnoses of autism without having to go true an evaluation testing processes. I was told that by the Office for Citizens with Developmental Disabilities(OCDD) here

Another IQ thread

IQ tests were originally designed to 'measure' (narrow) academic POTENTIAL (nothing more)
- at school, as in life, people routinely overachieve and under achieve relative to their potential (measured or not)

APQ might be a better description of the test and (with the elimination of the word 'intelligence') would almost certainly reduce the number of IQ threads on WP.

I have often wondered about this so I'm glad this has been brought up. In the last week or so I've taken two seperate IQ tests and scored 86 on one and 94 on the other. They give you 15 minutes to complete 30 questions.......and I was freaking out the entire time. Whenever I'm timed my mind goes into hyperdrive and I have a million voices flying through my head at once. I'll look at a question and read it, and at the same time I'm thinking of several other things (most of those time related) so then I'll just say "to hell with it" and click on an answer. If I wasn't timed I would probably do very well, but then I guess that would defeat the purpose since (to my knowledge) IQ tests are meant to test you on how fast you can process information and solve it? I've had doctors and other people say how intelligent I am but after taking these tests? I feel like I should have been in special education *shrugs*.

IQ tests, on a large scale, were originally designed to filter military draftees during World War I. Before that, they were a tool of eugenicists such as Francis Galton. For many decades, IQ tests were simply a way to identify the mentally ret*d and "substandard" and not at all a way to look for academic potential or giftedness. That aspect came much, much later.