Autism and IQ

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Thanks Isabella, I'm not a neurologist so you probably know more about this topic given your own experiences.
My own understanding is that damage to the cerebellum results in a drop in IQ....but...the severity and duration is highly variable from individual to individual. Throw in neuroplasticity/age/health in terms of recovery and it gets really complicated to make long term predictions.

There is a battery of tests that patients go through (I guess you know this already?) to gauge performance over time post-trauma.

In addition to global IQ there's specific tests for intelligence (including non-verbal) as well emotional regulation, stress, sensory and motor function. Any change in the brain can effect any other function in the body.

thank YOU for a great post!

I find a study (2012) that states "Performance IQ (PIQ) greater than verbal IQ (VIQ) is often observed in studies of the cognitive abilities of autistic individuals. This characteristic is correlated with social and communication impairments, key parts of the autism diagnosis."

This is certainly my experience. Even though my verbal tests as average my specialist considered it a diagnosable disability relative to my nonverbal abilities (my top score is 99.6 percentile for visual processing). I can see or feel a concept, but have significant difficulties communicating it. It's a real bummer for my confidence. My ASD daughter tends the same way. So much going on in her head and yet she struggles to come up with basic words. When she reads she can decode rapidly but doesn't comprehend well. Meanwhile my 8yo ADHD son is the opposite: he has problems decoding but has a significantly advanced vocabulary and comprehension. Now if he would just pay attention long enough to answer the questions...

Sounds like my girl. Her non-verbal intelligence is in the top 1% of the population.

Decoding written language is part of verbal, not non-verbal IQ.

Anything related to words is Verbal, even if the words are in print form.

Non-verbal measures our ability to see spatial patterns (shapes, colours, faces, sequences).


"Nonverbal intelligence describes thinking skills and problem-solving abilities that do not fundamentally require verbal language production and comprehension. This type of intelligence involves manipulating or problem solving about visual information and may vary in the amount of internalized, abstract, or conceptual reasoning and motor skills that are required to complete a task. Nonverbal intelligence is often closely linked with the Performance IQ domain of intellectual ability tests that evaluates nonverbal abilities, a domain which is often viewed in comparison to the Verbal IQ domain."

The only two times my daughter was asked to take a global IQ test when entering primary school and entering highschool, On both occasions she never finished (she was too distracted/tired) so I don't know what her true global IQ is but even the unfinished scores she got were in the high 70s and the second time in the high 80s.

I took an IQ test once. I passed with a D and got like a 69% on the test. At least I didn't get an F.


Yo, but I heard that some people score above 100% on their test; don't know how that's even possible. Maybe the teacher gave them extra credit or something.

the army iq test [ASVAB] gave me the equivalent of a B+. i wasn't really prepared for it.

Take an online IQ test and purposefully give wrong answers just to see what the lowest possible score on the test would be.

It would be funny if at the end of the test it said

"Your IQ score is 45. You suck!

Good day sir."

How do you convert raw scores on a Global IQ test into grades?

by aggregate %. in the army we were graded by % presumably on a curve. over 80% but under 90% is a B+.

Yep, do you know the grade boundaries Blabs?

just like they are in school - 60% barely passing [D], 70% average [C], 80% above average [B] and 90% superior [A]. again, the army doesn't give out letter grades, just %, i just like to use letter grades is all, because they are familiar.

In Australia we use the number of SDs from the mean as a guide.

Severe ID < 50
mild ID 50- 70 (70 being 2 x SD below the Mean)
Below average 70-85 (85 being 1 x SD below the mean)
average 85-115 (67% of the population fall 1 x SD from the mean)
Mensa genius > 130 (2 x SD above the Mean)

one of those geniuses, one lewis terman, invented the first army IQ/aptitude test to quickly ID/allocate recruits to their highest purpose. he later wrote an excellent book, "the gifted" to describe longitudinal studies of various of these recruits, finding the smarter they were, also the healthier/taller/richer/happier/more socially successful. that is what the book said. IMHO, i have serious doubts about the "happier" part. in my experience, the smarter one is, the more one IDs stuff to defeat happiness.

65% is almost always the pass/fail line in schools I went to.