Verbal and performance IQ gap

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I found out last year that there is a significant gap between my verbal IQ (131) and my performance IQ (103). This was a surprising result and the neuropsychologist could not explain it. Recently I was diagnosed with Asperger's by another therapist, so that's probably related. My score was also considerably lower than it had been in the past (145+).

What I don't understand is why I was able to do well academically in school, and excell in college, only to crash and burn hard later. I graduated with a BSc magna cum laude after only two years and eight months with a four-year degree, even though I went to college in the USA and not in my home contry of the Netherlands. Which means I had to overcome tremendous challenges and changes, like living with a foreign language, in a foreign culture, separated by thousands of miles from home, and moving out of my parents' home and living on my own all at once. While I was academically very succesful, my time in college was absolutely horrific, and it was certainly the worst period of my life. Socially I did not fit in at all, I was extremely lonely, very depressed and generally miserable. I then returned home and managed to graduate with an MBA from an internationally oriented business school in the Netherlands and the University of Chicago. After a few years of working at a few different jobs, I had a burnout and I haven't been able to work since. It's like all of my knowledge, capacity for learning new things and other skills just disappeared.

Is there such a thing as a "permanent autistic burnout" that you can't really fully recover from? I've been searching on the internet and haven't yet found anything substantial...

Thanks!

I have something similar. My verbal scores are off the top of the chart - the psychologist said there was no test in North America that could go high enough to give me a score, and did I want him to try Europe. But then, with shapes I'm nowhere. I just can't do hardly any of them. So - yes, there's a gap.

But is it only people with autism that have a gap on tests? Someone who's the "go to" person for a subject, but not for anything else? As I think of people I know, I see that many have one particular talent and average or low on the rest.

My scores would be similar. I have a high verbal I.Q. and score well on verbally based tests. However, I was an abject failure on the block design test. My brain just froze and I couldn't do even the easiest pattern.

It could be that that you took on too many new things all at once--so you couldn't adapt and learn the way you did in school.

It was more of an accident, but I'm sure it helped me socially to live in a Freshman dorm 4 years in a row. There is a lot of social learning your first year in college away from home--and I got to repeat it three times!

Being good in certain areas and poor in others is certainly a characteristic of Aspergers.

Looking at it from a neurological stand point my PsyD explained it to me like this.... there are areas of your brain the are "over-wired" in some areas and because of this there are some places that are underwired. Both ends of the "wiring" are outside the perameters of normal/average and can cause challenges because of it. My situation is very similar to yours but for me it is not verbal it is visual spacial. This kind of wiring is relatively common with people that have Asperger's. I am finding out that it is taking the good with bad and figuring out how to make it work in the context of every day life. Kind regards Shark

My verbal IQ has always been low and my performance IQ has always been average. In 5th grade it was 107 and my verbal IQ was a 92 so not too much of a gap and I would say that's normal. But before then there used to be a huge gap in between and then when my language improved, it was in the normal range instead of in the borderline ret*d range. But my deficits still showed on the test in areas I had troubles in. I did have troubles with school work and it got harder as I got older. Before then I was just struggling with attention span and auditory and understanding language and then it was with learning and processing because the work got harder and more abstract.

I'm the same way: I exhibit a high verbal IQ (99th percentile), but I'm average at best when it comes to spatial abilities. I can express myself verbally (more so in writing than speech) with great fluency, but I lack the mental "bookmark" feature needed to process all but the simplest spatial information.

So much for the stereotypes about Apies all being non-verbal engineers in embryo...

I once scored a 150 verbal, and a 90 Performance. I scored in the 80s on some tests.

Nowadays, it's about 120 Verbal, and 100 Performance. When it comes to pure "information," I tend to score really high.

I have only once had my IQ officially tested(at school when I was 14-15) but never got to know the results. However I know from online tests and books with IQ tests that I find verbal questions much easier than non verbal.


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