Gifted with Asperger's?

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I've heard of a lot of people who were very smart having to deal with two problems at once: being gifted in a society where people don't know how to deal with very smart people, and being having AS in a society which demands extensive social interactions. The two components supposedly interact in a way which makes it hard to recognize either unless you know what you're looking for. This may explain difficulty I've had trying to completely match my "symptoms" to the classical description of AS (how do I manage to maintain a stable job for 8.5 years with a condition where it's hard to stay employed (and where I often show lack of common sense), how come everyone thinks I'm more valuable than I think I am, how come I managed to survive four years at a very prestigious university, and stuff like that).

Is it possible for someone to be gifted and have AS at the same time? I'm wondering if I'm just mistaking the AS for being gifted. If people do have to face the challenges of being gifted and having AS, do you have any advice for me?

Thanks in advance,

ACG

In my case, I can say that being gifted is a skill that can empower oneself to actively seek and build the right environment for onself that maximises relevance of ones skills ans minimizes relevance of ones weaknesses. Finding the righ place is a task everyone has to do, but since not so many people are AS, you cannot copy as much information you need to manage life from other people but have to find out more on your own. It is more work, and your intelligence might help you doing it.

I'm not really the one to give advice, but i will give some now: if you don't know about it, learn about it. That's what i did, and you might not notice that i have AS at first glance, thanks to that. I would have had a book to recommend, too, but the book in question is meant for teens, so i don't think it will work out for one as old as you (assuming that you are 21 or older due to you occupation). I need to run CUL.

Archmage

In 1st grade, I began attending an intensive reading program at my elementary school because I had trouble learning how to read. I also attended summer school that year, learning absolutely nothing. In 4th grade, I was placed in my school's gifted program after taking a test for it; but I was removed from it the next year, nominally for not keeping up with my homework (when I was younger, I had trouble remembering my homework and textbooks sometimes for the first few weeks of the school year). The gifted program focused entirely on two things: a science fair project (which I never got around to doing) and math olympiads (which I wasn't very good at). Instead, I recall comparing oxymorons to some sort of oxy- acne medication that I remembered from a commercial of that era. I wanted to learn Spanish, but the gifted program teacher did not cover foreign languages that year, instead focusing on things I had little interest in.

In my senior year in high school, when I was 18, I was diagnosed with autism by the school district. The people who diagnosed me considered autism, Asperger's syndrome, nonverbal learning disorder, and pragmatic language disorder to all be closely affiliated syndromes, so they simply gave me the autism diagnosis. I was not diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome because there were no records of my early language progress (of course, because that wasn't an issue!).

It is certainly possible for someone to be intelligent while exhibiting the traits of Asperger's Syndrome. I'm assuming from the tone of your post that "intelligent" is what you mean by "gifted."

I don't see intelligence and Asperger's Syndrome as being a dual challenge. Rather, superior intelligence makes a person more likely to develop successful ways of interacting with neurotypical humans despite the nonverbal communication barriers associated with Asperger's Syndrome.

The most intelligent people with Asperger's Syndrome are likely to perceive the differences between themselves and neurotypical humans. They are also likely to understand neurotypical human behavior well enough to realize that such differences are not tolerated well by most people. As a result, intelligent people with Asperger's Syndrome are more likely to compensate for these differences enough to function in neurotypical society.

In fact, because they tend to integrate themselves so well into society, the most intelligent people with Asperger's Syndrome are the least likely to be formally diagnosed. Conversely, the people with Asperger's Syndrome who have the most difficulty functioning in society are by far the most likely to undergo psychological screening and receive a formal diagnosis.

This leads to a strong bias in the statistics associated with people formally diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. Since a heavily disproportionate number of formal diagnoses are given to the most poorly functioning people with Asperger's Syndrome, it is not surprising that Asperger's Syndrome is (possibly erroneously) linked to an inability to hold a job or exhibit "common sense."

Jay - sigh. yes, i agree absolutely, although i wouldn't use the phrase "poorly functioning", as it sounds a bit negative to me. i've managed to scrape through some areas of life (others were easy-peasy), and so i doubt i'll ever get a formal diagnosis.

oh well - at least i know myself.

V

UK statistics show only 12% of diagnosed aspies are in full time employment. Some element of underdiagnosis of 'higher functioning' aspies may account for part of this but surely not to that extent.

Personally despite having a degree and a tested IQ in the 'superior' range I still struggle with social interaction in a work environment, and sensory issues can be a problem all the way up the scale. I also struggle to organise my thoughts under stress and the number of messes I drag myself through are more than you would expect without some 'executive dysfunction' (which the psychologist picked up on incidentally). So given this, intelligence and ability to function as an NT don't appear to me to be solidly linked.

I wish I had some common sense (perhaps I wouldn't have started this rant if I had, LOL) and have a long track record of being unable to hold down a job. Looking back, the reasons for employment breaking down can be linked directly or indirectly to sensory stress or traits associated with having AS.

rant over

Dunc

I was extensively tested and diagnosed as "gifted" in first grade. For what it's worth, my school records say that my IQ is "somewhere above 150." I was advanced a year in elementary school. I would have advnaced another year and graduated from high school in 3 instead of 4 years, except that my father's job changed and we moved to a new school district. I graduated from college summa cum laude. Yet I was always very different from the other gifted students in my classes. A difference I did not understand to be Aspergers until this year.

41 years of studying NT's and conforming myself to "fit in" as best as I could, has made me fairly indistinguishable from the average person -- when I am really trying. <--very stressful, very stressful indeed. But I know the "real me" is quite different, and the people close to me accept that I am rather "weird" when I am relaxed and not "performing" for the NT public.

I doubt I would get an official diagnosis, and I am not really interested in pursuing one at this point in my life.

Different Minds: Gifted Children With AD/HD, Asperger Syndrome, and other Learning Deficits by Deirdre V. Lovecky

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... 853029645/

(how do I make a decent, *short* url out of this?)

[edit: it's shorter now ]

Last edited by echospectra on 04 Dec 2004, 3:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Looks good! I may have to buy myself this for Christmas.

Yowch! That is one long URL!

Mich

Unnecessarily long. This URL goes to the same place:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... 853029645/

Thanks

For UK people: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1853029645/

Common sense?

Well I have good sense but it's hardly common! Do they perhaps mean behaving as consistently/irrationally as normal people do? I'll admit to not being very good at that!

Is memorizing word for supposed to be something common in all aspies? I don't know that I memorize anything. I deduce that it would be illogical to memorize books or specific facts since they often change especially science and history. Both are always finding new facts to disprove the old. I can think of instances where I have pretty good recall though. I can go to a grocery store and no matter how many things I buy, I know the price of everything in the cart and if the cash registar misses it by a penny I have held lines for several minutes over the inaccuracy. I have much of Spaceballs memorized. A lot things that I learn or remember I edit to my thought style to make it easier to remember so I don't remember every word in the Three Kingdoms, but I know most all the characters in it, somewhere between 500 and 700, this includes the three brothers Zhang, the three brother bond of the Shu Han ruler, Tiger Generals of Wei and Shu. I remember these characters better than the Robin Hood like characters of Outlaws of the Marsh because the story is expressed better in light of the characters and the video games that correlate to the Three Kingdoms. Its hard to say if I memorize anything, sometimes I can remember things if I come upon the right code word. I have always thought my brain was organized by code words used to access all my mental data, but I don't always remember the code words. Is this memory thing an AS breaker trait?