Can giftedness become autism?

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Can giftedness become autism?

For example, if someone decides that they are fed up with the society that they live in, have become severely introverted. I know certain other gifted people and they seem to exhibit all the same behaviours, and fit ALL of the DSM IV characteristics.

Although, they have made a choice rather than being born with it. However, the whole idea that you are born with a behavioural set seems quite farfetched to me. How is this even possible?

Suppose having gifted characteristics is separate to autism, could you effectively develop autism from adaptation? If you do not use your social skills, they will deteriorate. Remember the brain is a malleable device.

A gifted individual may display behavioural signs indicative of being on the autistic spectrum, yes.

Does this make them autistic? No. Autism is a particular neurological condition arising from the composition of the brain, which was itself determined during conception.

You can be gifted and have autism, and you can be gifted and not have autism.

Being gifted only causes you to be different than others because you're more intelligent and thus it isolates you from your average peers, or something like that. It doesn't cause autism. Though one could say being autistic causes you to be gifted. I don't know how valid that statement would be, but you could say it.

Years of isolation won't put a person on the spectrum. They'll come out of isolation a little weird, but in time be able to pick up where they left off. They won't be autistic at all. For NTs, socialization is like riding a bike almost, and they don't have to think about it too much.

I suggest you do more research on autism before sharing such an ignorant statement.

Autism is not just a behaviour disorder, but can be localised in certain parts of the brain. Doctors can only study the behaviour to come to a diagnosis but it is caused by an underdeveopment or overdevelopment in the brain. Some skills you may be lacking in and some others you have an almost savant ability in. There's also the copied number gene variants they've found to have done mass deletions of. And it does tend to run in families. They've even found the frontal lobes to be under active and thus not communicating properly with the rest of the brain.

I highly doubt that a gifted introvert can become autistic. The only way would be through damage to the frontal and temporal lobes, or perhaps the limbic system. They will always have the ability to socialise. When you're born autistic you have a deficit in social understanding and may not even desire it, as was the case with me. Not to mention having sensory issues ranging from mild to severe, a difficultly adapting to change and an unregulated limbic system that makes it hard to control your emotions. And possibly have ADHD, learning disorders, epilepsy, bipolar and other such conditions co-morbid.

Honestly, autism is a developmental disability and it will take more than forced social withdrawal to become autistic. At best, you'll be falsely mistaken for a bit AS.

The NT brain is extremely plastic and can re-rehabilitate itself when it has been damaged. The autistic brain isn't far behind but takes extra work to develop new connections.

I would argue that you can be taught to prefer to be by yourself as a result of how others respond to youe efforts to be social. Being gifted can be far more apparent at an early age to those around you where many of the social aspects become more apparent as you reach teen years. When your status socially goes from being controlled by adults to being controlled by peers. Parents may well think its pretty cool that you know so much about science, teenage peers, not so much.

"Autism" as is currently diagnosed is, for all practicall efects, a behaviour disorder.

I am a gifted intervention specialist. I worked with gifted kids for four years until our funding was cut. Now I work in the reading department. I can tell you that a gifted person will not become autistic later because autism is something we have when we are a baby---we do not develop it later in life. As another poster said, you can have autism and be gifted---that's called twice gifted. I can also tell you from my experience in working with gifted kids and belonging to an autism support group with autistic kids that there even though there are similarities between the two groups, there are quite noticeable differences. Rather than try to list these differences, you can easily go into the internet and find reputable sources that describe these differences in detail.

When I was in high school back in the early 1980s, I was put in the gifted program (which at that time consisted of a monthly meeting and an occasional field trip---nothing like gifted programs today). The way you were chosen where I live was by teacher vote---not by testing. There were three or four of us chosen from each school, and we were only in the program our junior year. After being diagnosed with Asperger's as an adult, I wondered about the gifted thing with me. One requirement to be gifted here is to have an IQ of at least 126. I got the records from my old school and discovered my IQ was 111. I showed the test results to an expert in gifted testing and found out the test was still considered a valid measure of IQ. I was also told about the margin of error on the test and that the highest score I may have gotten would have been around 120. So by that definition I was not gifted. I researched more into the traits and characteristics of the autistic versus the gifted, and found that I matched the autistic traits and characteristics.

People will say that I am gifted in music. I can play a variety of musical instruments I am fascinated with in little time and with no lessons or instruction. I was playing trombone professionally by the time I was in high school. But upon leaning about my musical ability, I discovered it was because of autism. I am a talent savant (at least 10% of those of us with autism have some type of savant ability).

I just thought of this. Since I was a child, I have loved roller coasters. They are a special intense interest. By the time I was in high school I had memorized the statistics (height, length, ride time, designer, builder, and year of construction) for every roller coaster in North America. I didn't try to memorize this---it just happened that I remembered it. That is a savant skill for me. Gifted children interested in roller coasters might be more curious about more in-depth studies of roller coasters than the statistics. But for me, I was more into the statistics. Where the gifted child might try to build a working model of a roller coaster, I found immense pleasure by listing and categorizing roller coasters according to heights, year of construction, etc.---just list after list of categorizing---notebook after notebook of more or less the same things.

Now, I liked (and still do) to draw up roller coasters for my future dream amusement park. The gifted child would probably try to design his or her own original designs for their amusement park. I planned roller coasters that already existed or were defunct. Or I might combine two existing roller coaster plans together to make a bigger one. But I didn't much original planning or roller coasters. Even today, as I am working on a scale model amusement park, I am relying heavily on rides that aready exist(ed).

Perhaps you can take a journey of discovery by doing the same type of research. I can say that you learn a lot by doing this.

Last edited by glider18 on 03 Oct 2011, 6:50 am, edited 2 times in total.

Well not sure where that idea came from but by observing others who are supposedly normal. They are not social beings at all.

Few people stand on the corner of the street greeting everyone that passes by.

Even less social are people in lecture halls, seeking rarely to talk and wandering outside often to do something.

I highly doubt that just through observation one can state another was born to be a socialite... Likewise how can the same logic be applied to diagnosing the recluse.

Can people really see if you are social? I am not really sure because there is no objectivity and i cannot distinguish between it.

Ahhh, what about politicians??? LOL.

I wonder what most politicians are???

...... What?

Through observation one can observe whether a person shows an inherent knowledge of social interaction and body language, versus someone who inherently has no f'ing clue what the other person's body language means. One is gifted and a recluse, but not autistic, the other is gifted and autistic. Guess which one is which.

Glider: My assumption with politicians has always been that they're pricks. It's a sub-category of NT specially reserved for people who "want to make a difference" and then go into politics and do jack.

It's pervasive. Effects behavior, cognition, and sensory perception.

Nope, developmental. Behavioral means something else. Oppositional defiant disorder and conduct disorder are behavioral disorders. Autism is diagnosed via behavior, but is really a pervasive developmental disorder that impacts cognition, perception, behavior, social interaction, etc.

Yes they are.



Like glider18 said, what about politicians? But they aren't the only ones. Plenty of extroverts do actually greet everyone they see (although these people are often in motion themselves, thus not just standing and greeting). There have been plenty of unhappy threads wondering how to deal with these people since a return greeting is generally expected.



Observe more carefuly. After a lecture, it is quite common for many people to immediately start talking to each other. The places where people don't do this are places where quiet is enforced, such as libraries.



One can if one observes toddlers. They are too young to be affected by social influences. They just are as they are. And it is very easy to spot which 2 year old is an introvert and which is an extrovert. At that young age, you can safely assume they are born to it.



Yes they really can, mainly by observing how you interact with them and others.

I know an NT who had got all As and A+s in his exams. He loves studying. He isn't really socially confident though, but he is NT. So maybe gifted people aren't Autistic, but can have a nice nature or a certain shyness to them.

I was gifted and Aspie, mild enough to be hardly noticed, but late in tying shoes, unable to catch a ball, etc. Through all stages of friendship, luckily, I had a multitude of cousins, who were used to me, and my very own parents' only child, who also got most of the solitude she wanted. I was born in 1944, so nobody knew I was Asperger's until I was about 65 years old. I blamed my lack of popularity in High School, (outside of my cousins) on being bright, being plump, and wearing glasses. I was always trying to get a grip on "social skills", but somehow never could. My HS years straddled Sputnik, at which time the various accelerated education and gifted programs suddenly got started, to keep our education up with the Russians. (Nobody was yet scared of the Chinese). I was in one gifted program in HS (plus taking all the science, math and music I could get), and that was pretty lame, just extra work like writing essays, not really enriched.

My daughter was gifted and NT. She was in gifted programs all through grade school and HS, born 1974.

but anecdotes do not equal data.