IQ is not directly related to functioning level

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I knew this boy who was diagnosed with autism. He had mild autistic symptoms, but he was mentally handicapped. He did act very immature for his age, but I think that was mostly related to being mentally handicapped. He was verbal, I don't think he stimmed and he didn't really have special interests either. He was kind of like a real life version of Sam from I am Sam.

There are also people like Carly Fleischmann who are severely autistic, but have an average intelligence.

Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay was diagnosed with low-functioning non-verbal autism and his IQ got measured at 186.
He wrote books starting age 8 and poetry.
Despite is extreme high IQ he has severe autistic symptoms.

edited as some smiley pops up in combination with number 8 and ( ).

Last edited by Eloa on 28 Mar 2014, 6:57 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Just because there are examples of people with low IQs who function well doesn't mean there isn't a strong correlation between IQ and functioning ability which I believe there is. Statistics deal with large numbers.

This.

Here in Norway, there are only two (out of five million people) with intellectual disability who work in normal full-time jobs (i.e. non-sheltered jobs) without any form of compensation or benefits.

I never said that he functioned well, I just said that he has mild autistic symptoms.

My counselor and I both have asperger's and thanks to this she finds it easier to understand aspie clients than a neurotypical counselor would. She once told me that the more we have to offer the people around us, the more strange people will allow us to be. She is formally educated in veteranary medicine and psychology. In addition to this, she is an exceptionally bright individual who's learned to navigate the labyrinth of social interaction.

I have a 150 IQ (though I was told there is a ten point error margin so perhaps I should say my IQ is between 145 and 155), I was diagnosed with Asperger's when I was 6 years old, and have extremely high aptitudes in almost all areas that I've been tested on. However, my strongest area is literature. This is not because I am wired to understand the english language more easily than machines or numbers, but because I spent more time doing the things that I enjoyed than the things that I didn't.

I enjoyed reading (and to a lesser extent writing) and so skills pertaining to those activities are more developed than other skills I might have developed more easily than most. I was accepted into TAG (talented and gifted) for my exceptional grasp of literature and of the English language. I've also developed some other unusual skills, but that's my most notable one. Now, while this sometimes proves useful, it's not the most sought after skill in the world. So, I'm permitted to behave in a somewhat strange way because I can teach other students how to view blocked websites on school computers or give them the deffinition and propper spelling of a word upon request. However, she can get away with being more strange because she has diplomas and is knowledgeable on a number of things which most people (including myself) are not.

Does that make sense? So, if one had the social deficits that come with autism without any redeeming qualities, people would have very little patience for their behavior. However, if in addition to being socially inept, they were extremely articulate or had an incredible grasp of complex arithmetic or could design elaborate electrical devices, people would be more tolerant of their idiosyncratic behavior.

If my functioning level correlated with my level of intelligence....I'd probably be functional enough to hold a job.

A good example of this is stated in the documentary, Autism is a World.

Links:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443434/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism_Is_a_World

Sue Ruben was tested as Mentally Challenged at the age of 6. With her being introduced to facilitated communication, her most recent IQ score revealed that she's highly intelligent.

This is totally me too.

Good point - functioning level and autism severity are not the same thing.

Two kids I knew illustrate this fairly well, in my opinion. Both were considered low-functioning autistic, but they were very different.

The first boy, an 8 year old had very prominent autistic traits. He communicated mostly through immediate and delayed echolalia, had poor receptive language, rarely if ever made eye contact, stimmed a great deal and had strong intense interests.

The second boy, a 15 year old, was nonverbal - I never heard him make any recognizable words. He stimmed a lot, and had an obsessive interest. But he was also quite social, and seemed to understand a great deal more about others than he could express. He was also very good at getting his point across by grunting and gesturing.

The first boy would be accurately described as 'severely autistic'. However, the second boy, despite being lower functioning in terms of expressive language, came across as a lot less autistic to me. I'd have put him at mild-moderate autistic traits. But I'm guessing he had a cognitive disability along with his autism, making him lower-functioning.

Yeah, I agree, you can have really strong autistic traits but still be pretty smart (academically speaking) or (more generally) very talented.

This is why we need to be sure that autistic kids get all the opportunities to learn that we can give them--even if they are extremely autistic. With all the crazy skill scatter you get on the spectrum, it's not at all unlikely that someone who can't get the hang of tying shoes or speaking words might have a real knack for biology or cake-decorating. Or whatever. Talents are as diverse as the people who have them.

IQ has nothing to do with functioning level. It's commonly misconstrued because of communication difficulties between doctor and patient.

I've seen many, many people on WP claim that the functioning level categories are practically meaningless. If there isn't a coherent description of functioning levels, then it's similarly meaningless to claim that IQ is not directly related to functioning level. So, what is the meaning of these "functioning levels" we speak of, such that it's even possible to conceptualize what they are or are not directly related to?

disagreed that functioning has nothing to do with IQ level,however the severity of a persons autism can conflict with their daily life and creates barriers for them.
for example;it doesnt automaticaly make them low or mid functioning if they have severe executive dysfunction but a very high IQ and need some support in their life as an adult,it just means their autism severity is causing them significant contradiction with their actual functioning level.

That is a great question and I would love to know the answer.

The actual criticism is that functioning labels used to make claims about what people can and cannot do are misleading. "High functioning" leads people to believe that someone with that functioning label has skills they do not, or that someone with a "low functioning" label has no skills at all, even though this is very unlikely. Basically, they're used to minimize the difficulties some autistic people deal with and exaggerate the difficulties other autistic people deal with. This often makes them meaningless because they are used to say things that are not true.