Can mental impairments change to normal before adulthood?

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I want to tell you aspies if you think this is possible to happen and if you actually know someone who has the same life story as mine.


When I was just an infant, my mother thought I had some form of autism as I made no point of making eye contact and socializing with my family. It turns out according to a phychologist who tested me at school, told my mother that I was mentally delayed and I was going to need life long support due to my severity of my mental delays. For most of my academic life during the pre high school years, I was put into a self contained Life Skills curriculum that taught more about self adaptive skills as well as teaching simple academic subjects such as Division and animal adaptive environments. I also had speech therapy as well as being taught how to do laundry.


Now here I am entering high school with social skills getting much better but still learning simple 6 grader subjects. One week into school, some phychologist tested my abstract thinking skills to see how my cognitive abilities ranged based on how I did on the Woodcock Johnson III testing. Odddly enough, I felt like I've missed out alot of school life since I was segregated from the normal kids. My reading level was freshman level and I also had other stunning abilities that wouldn't come right of someone who's been in self contained classrooms. Only score that was below 70 on the testing was my prossing speed, which was a 65.


Ever since that day, I've been in resource classes and learning the same stuff as the other classes except that the way it's teaches is more slower pace then what you'll expect in regular classes. So honesty, could have I been misdiagnosed with mental retardation at an early age or is it possible to become normal average intelligence later on in life?

No guess takers that want to give out a deep, intellectual, hypothesis to my question?

You were definitely misdiagnosed at an early age. That used to happen a lot with autism because people really didn't understand it. You were never mentally ret*d.

You have to give it longer than a half an hour!

That being said, yes, you can minimize some traits with age and a healthy upbringing. A close friend of mine has a son that one doctor said is autistic and one said isn't due to some small detail. At any rate, he went from being special needs to a good student over the course of a few years. He still isn't socially all that great but he can take care of himself and no one bullies him. His thought patterns are still very black and white and he has a good sense of right and wrong due to it. How he will be after adolescence no one knows, but from what I know his home life has been positive and loving, so I think his chances at a fulfilling life are very good.

Part of the problem some children with learning disabilities have is that some of them have terrible parents. If the child is abused, then they shut down their ability to learn because they are always activating the defensive part of the brain. Kids who suffer this way in childhood often turn out poorly as adults because they never learned well due to the fear. Nurture has a lot to do with how any child, no matter if they have a disability or are gifted, will turn out.

You mention that you had speech therapy, which implies you had speech problems. If those were the kind that seriously affect communication (as opposed to, say, a lisp or something), then you may not have been able to understand the questions or answer the ones you did understand when you were tested at a younger age. This would have made your IQ seem lower than it really was. Children with communication problems are hard to test accurately.

I was never diagnosed with mental retardation but I used to score in that range. At least the doctors knew I wasn't really. It was my language delay that made me score low.

My mom also had a student who was misdiagnosed with MR because he scored low on the tests because he couldn't read. No one would teach him to read because they thought he was incapable of it. Even the parents believed it and the diagnoses but my mother was the only one who knew he was not ret*d. So she taught him how to read and everyone was shocked.

More likely I had mental impairments when I was younger and outgrown them when I reach the age of 15.

"Developmental delay" would probably be a better term. Autistic development... well, it's just plain atypical. Autistics learn things out of order, faster or slower; plateau for a while then suddenly get it. You started out slow then caught up.

For that matter, I question highly whether "intelligence" is a real thing that represents more than your score on an IQ test. Situations like yours are just way too common--a kid gets a 70 one year, a 120 three years later; or the sub-scores are so scattered as to make the full-scale meaningless. However much they try to insist on it, IQ is not actually constant over one's lifetime. If you're neurotypical, it's more constant than it is for most people; but if you're different for any reason--autistic, developmentally delayed, bad environment, unusually good environment, physical illness, brain injury, language differences, culture differences--your IQ scores start jumping around more and more.

The IQ test was normed on neurotypical people. It's valid mostly for neurotypical people. The further you get from typical, the less your IQ can predict about your abilities even six months into the future, let alone six years.

Sometimes I think we'd be better off if nobody ever thought to use the IQ test on anybody out of the normal range. It's just way too easy to stereotype people by the scores they get on that stupid thing.

Thanks for all the comments people . I really appreciate all the help I'm getting from all of the comments posted here. Still want more advices from you guys about this subject but form what I'm seeing the discussion has been helpful.

Just how old were you when you were tested? From what I've observed, IQ tests are really unreliable in young children in general, with or without ASD. I work with preschoolers who have IEPs. In the program where I work, most of the children are not on the spectrum, though there are a few who might be PDD-NOS, functioning at the higher end of the autism spectrum. The majority of the children at this program have delays with Speech and Language. Some also have delays with motor skills, and sensory issues. Many have difficulties with behavior and self regulation. Where I live, most preschoolers in the Special Education system are simply labeled a "preschool student with a disability," unless they have a really obvious condition, like Down's Syndrome or severe cerebral palsy. Thus, the students where I work are usually just labeled "preschool student with a disability."

I'm going to get to my point. Some of these children come in with IEPs stating that they test in the moderately low, Borderline, delayed or (in at least one case) extremely low range of intellectual functioning. I've worked closely with some of these students, and in the majority of these cases, it eventually becomes apparent that these initial IQ results are not accurate.

Of course, these children are coming in within their first five years of life, the "formative years." At that time, the brain is considered "plastic," meaning that significant changes can occur in the brain, depending on what the child is exposed to. The education and therapy these children receive over the course of the (on average) two years they spend in the program could be a contributing factor, causing changes in the brain, and in intellectual functioning. I have seen some children make really dramatic progress. That said, some children make faster and more significant progress than others with the same sort of therapy and instruction, indicating that nature plays a role as well as nurture. In other words, the potential for greater intellectual functioning is there from the start, but not coming out on the tests. Of course, many of these particular students come in with delays in receptive as well as expressive language. In other words, some of these children, are not understanding some of what the tester is saying, which will render it difficult to correctly follow instructions. Additionally, some young children may perform inconsistently, or more poorly than their normal level when being tested by someone they don't know. It also makes a difference if the child is tired, or hungry, or having a bad day at the time of the test. All of these factors and more can lead to a lower score, misrepresenting a child's true potential.

Just from reading your post, you demonstrate abstract reasoning abilities that would not be found in someone with MR. I'd say that the IQ test results were *not* an accurate measure of your ability.

Your story is a common tail --

You see the diagnosis of being on the Spectrum and where is totally up to the "professional" do it. There no real standards just some "professionals" say so -- needless to say many of these people let their opinions get involved so what diagnosis you get is much dependent on the "professional" doing the diagnosis than on any traits or symptoms you manifest.

My guess is that first doctor - saw a young child showing some deficits in what he considered normal development - so he decided in his "normal" NT prejudicial fashion that you were stupid and that was the end of discussion. An all too common miss diagnosis. My son had been to a couple of Professionals who thought him normal but maybe a bit slow - the middle school wanted to place him in low performance classes despite excellent marks from his elementary school in science and math - and only moved him to AP classes (with support - that he did not use much of) after we demanded such. Where upon he went through every Advanced class in math, science and history they had and mostly with As. This last year my son was seen by a Professional who was himself HFA and went through a battery of tests that lead to a diagnosis of Asperger's.

As for getting better as social activities - most Autsic/Asperger's get better at NT interaction as time goes and we learn to mimic those around us - some do better at this than others - if you were hit mildly in this area - you may have an easier time of it than others among us - or maybe you have used your ability to focus narrowly on a given subject on this problem and thus doing much better than you had in the past.

If I were in your place with what you have discovered - I would devise some basic experiments to see just what your mind is capable of - the web site Kahnacadmey.org is a math tutor site starting at the very simplest arithmetic through to the most complex math - study some science to see if you are capable of following scientific thought - try playing around with a computer running Linux to see if you are capable in tech - try learning an interment to see if you have talent in music - try drawing - maybe you already know of areas that fascinate you.

You should take at least one life lesson from this experience - Just Because so "professional" says it does not make it true. - Check and check again.

My son's IQ was tested just before his 5th birthday and he scored in the borderline range, around 78. Based on these results my husband and I have investigated several school options as he is due to start primary school next year and when we went to a 'special needs school' it became abundantly clear to me that my son's IQ is not in this range. The therapist made a note in the report that he should be retested as he was 'somewhat uncooperative' during the test (understatement, he didn't even look at her most of the time). Anyway...now the primary schools are requesting all reports for my son before he starts and I am extremely hesitant to include it because I don't think this is information that should follow him around and god forbid, he should find out that he tested low. Then again, I am not keen on the rigmarole of retesting him and putting him through the anxiety. Not too sure what to tell the schools. I am keen to include information that is more useful - splinter skills and best ways for him to learn.

I was telling my parents this and my father said that he remembers reading that Neill Armstrong was tested as having a low IQ as a child and his parents said, whatever happens don't let him know and well, we all know how that story ends.

Ask your father what source he read about Neil Armstrong being tested as having a low IQ since I can't find any site on the web that has reported this story.

Last edited by autisticyoungadult on 08 Jul 2012, 12:57 am, edited 1 time in total.

Your body corrects itself as you grow.

But let's just say if you tested someone in the first grade and found out they scored below average, would you assume that person will start to develop to the point where they can start learning abstract subjects such as algebra? Most psychologists assume you don't develop to much from that individual since his or her score indicated weakness that will be through their life.

No, humans cannot get smarter as we age. Each of us is born with a certain set of brain cells based on genetic material from a long line of ancestors (which, for those of us alive today, apparently number in the billions). So whatever intelligence and motor skills we are born with, and to whatever extent or limitation our genetic material imposes upon us, we are trainable and can exhibit learned skills over time. As our behavior changes through education (formal and self-taught), rote memorization, repetition, mimicking language skills and social cues by listening to and observing others, various other stimuli, life experiences, and the extent of our creativity, we also learn to communicate and articulate ourselves and our thoughts.

Except for being developmentally delayed, your evolution over time seems no different from that of the rest of us. It is just taking longer. Unfortunately the generally accepted perception of slow developers is that they are also mentally challenged. And yet you seem to express your thoughts well enough that few of us would consider you mentally ret*d. But then again, we do not know you and can judge you only from afar and by your written communications.

Still have you asked whether the results of this recent Woodcock Johnson III testing has caused a re-evaluation by educators and your psychologist of your IQ, learning capabilities, and social skills? Have you asked your parents and siblings lately to see if they still think of you as being mentally ret*d? And what books are you currently reading and will you tell us also about your current hobbies?

As to your recent question, does this line mean anything to you: "I am not a number!"

lol

Memorable words. If we change "number" to "score," is the meaning/sentiment still the same?

Definitely try not to regret or stay angry about "missing out" of regular school classrooms and assignments and being segregated from "normal kids." Because so-called normal kids and teachers can be mean and cruel with kids who are markedly different from them. If you have not been bullied (made fun of and physically assaulted) yet by your peer age group, count yourself among the lucky few unscathed and unscarred Aspies. Humans, as an animal species, are no different from other animals that treat their weak ones badly. Except we're taught to be "nice" and to say "Sorry" after we have meted out our hurt.

BTW in third grade my teacher and school principal recommended to my mother that I be placed in a special education school. They probably noted some Aspie traits in me but my mother got the impression they were telling her I was mentally ret*d. So she said No! At least, that is how she recounted the story to me years later. Still I sure fooled them! Because in the eighth grade I tested in the genius level IQ range. In the local all-academic high school I attended, at least two teachers thought I was stupid and said so to my face. They were "normal" too.