ASD & intelligence What's the truth?

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On one hand.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21272389/

On the other hand.



https://embrace-autism.com/autism-and-high-iq/

Last edited by Cornflake on 14 Feb 2022, 1:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.: Corrected typo

Take into account that the first study is:

-Debunking the idea held for a long time that ASD comes with severe mental impairment
-Focused on children

Without reading actual text and analysing the data, I can state the following:

1) Different analytical methods and ways of evaluating intelligence of ASD individuals can result in different outcomes. This study is approaching the subject from one of possible angles. There is little to none standardisation of research methods in field of psychology and intelligence tests can also produce different results. I've taken two "professional" ones in my life, they were different and results were significantly different: 118 vs 140.

It is possible that data presented in both sources you've linked has been acquired using different methods.

2) The data presented on a webpage is not supported by any citations and sources are pointed at only vaguely. We do not have any idea about sample size, testing methods etc. - as far as we are concerned, we are simply given arbitrary numbers without evidence to back them. This is not even a meta-analysis of the subject, this is taking NAR data and comparing it against some vague IQ levels in general population (this data also lacks any source to back these numbers).

Scientific way of analysing the data is not working like it - if you want to came up with conclusions based on other people's work, you want to gather the information from as many sources as possible, compare how it was acquired (methodology, sample etc.) and try to streamline the results based on it to get a meaningful average which in turn will allow you to make conclusions.

3) The population sample used in paper for sure have a different composition and diversity when it comes to severity of ASD than one in NAR. Why? The signing-up for NAR is voluntarily and this is why most likely majority of people in the register are on the better functioning side of the spectrum. This will of course skew the results in favour of higher IQ in ASD population.

I suspect that children evaluated in 2011's study were picked from those who attended some form of therapy in facilities the researchers had access to. Thing is, the better functioning ASD people are quite often still not diagnosed in childhood, so it is possible that a higher percentage of more severely impacted individuals was present in this study. This sways the results in direction of average/lower intelligence levels.

4) Measuring IQ in juvenile subject is largely imprecise due to the fact it is always a snapshot of some stage of development. Some children develop faster than others and will score higher than their peers. But this doesn't necessarily predefine the outcome in adult life. You can have two individuals, one of which scored better than the other as a kid, but scores (sometimes significantly) worse than them as an adult.

This is because one can have a rapid progression of mental capacity development and cognitive function, getting to the point of being stable at young age, whereas another can have slower but longer one, peaking and stabilising at age of 20-25 (25 years old is most often considered an end of brain development phase for most people).

I'm sure that you've seen it yourself - kids getting really good grades and being considered highly intelligent only to grow up to be average adults and ones who struggled at school in young age, but found way more success later on and outpaced their former classmates in terms of overall intelligence levels.

To sum it up: science is hard.

Especially if we talk about areas which border on not being science, such as psychology, where consensus is not achieved in even most basic things, as there are like 7 major schools with almost 50 different sub-factions with different approaches to studying human mind. Psychological studies' results usually cannot be replicated and verified that way, which is normal procedure for, well, sciences. Neither source can be taken as definitive analysis

A trustworthy study of intelligence levels of autistic people would need to meet the following criteria:

-Test sample should be composed with adequate proportions of people with different levels of ASD severity, from people who are dependant on others to highly functioning individuals.
-The intelligence should be measured by several different methods, considering that one individual can score higher or lower in different test types.
-Researchers should pay attention to background of people. It is proven that environmental factors can impact intellect of an individual, or at least their proficiency at tasks which are measured with the IQ tests.

Embrace Autism is doing a good job of getting actual truth out there into public info stream. Truth is we are a spectrum in all ways. Thanks for the post.

By lumping Aspergers (traditionally high IQ, like the four children Has Asperger studied) with classical autism (brain damaged children), one could not expect to get a "spectrum" that parallels the larger population.

The graphic chart and info from embrace autism is completely BS.

The official CDC data with a large sample size states around 30% have ID, then a approx 25% borderline low intelligence.

So the 55% figure is about right.

This was in 8 year olds, so IQ measuring can be a bit tricky, further studies were done in 19 year old adults and was found this 25% splits approx in half. One half of borderline group becoming ID the other half average intelligence.

So it’s fair to say approx 45% of autistic adults have ID.

Best get your figures from scientific sources rather than small political groups that have some sort of agenda and try to tell you some porky pies as we say in England.

Thank you for your thorough reply KMCIURA. Re child A >B and later B>A I was aware that changes can occur in the teenage years. https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog ... t-constant

In my case I don't think things changed much . Pre teen= 147. Test devised by a psychometrician over the last 2 years=
Mean (μ): 147.83333333333
Median: 148
Mode: 148

That's simple averaging. I am aware of https://assessingpsyche.wordpress.com/2 ... eir-parts/

It did make me wonder ,as it was contrary to other things I've read about ASD and intelligence.

So, to explain this, the info the blog used was an uncontrolled voluntary sample from a dutch research group from those that wanted to participate & followed them through the course of their life.

So, in other words like a club, it only measured those that wanted to join up, which conveniently removed those who were too disabled to participate or if their families couldn’t be bothered. So its statistically flawed.

A bit like advertising for those in your town who had COVID to volunteer their experiences and data & basing national COVID data on that alone, some wont be bothered to reply others will be dead so you wont get an accurate picture.

This is different from the one the CDC conducts that measures a large controlled sample group of those diagnosed & takes data from there.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/67/ss/ss6706a1.htm

The official stats for 8 year old autistic kids is:-

31% - Intellectually disabled IQ - 70 or below
25% - below average IQ - 71-85 (borderline range)

44% - average or above on IQ 86 & above

So according to official controlled stats the majority of autistic kids age 8 or 56 % - had below average IQ

Obviously this is 8 year olds that can be tricky to measure & there are not many controlled studies done on adults except this controlled one that followed autistic toddlers to adulthood age 19.

Basically states those with ID at 8 largely stay ID at 19, but in the borderline group the 25% splits in two half joining ID the other average IQ

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4876598/

So from the CDC data & controlled scientific study its fair to say around 43% of autistic adults have Intellectual Disability.

Which sounds about right as so many autistic people are unable to live alone and require carers

!	Cornflake wrote:
	A very poor attempt at humour, based on a typo, has been removed. We're better than that, surely?

I think people are still trying to figure out what the “truth” is regarding this issue. It was once thought that the majority of autistics had intellectual impairments. Then, when the spectrum was broadened and Asperger’s was recognized, the “eccentric genius” stereotype got publicity. I don’t think autism is necessarily related to high or low intelligence per se, but more of an imbalanced intelligence. Like it’s common for those on the spectrum to have both areas of giftedness as well as impairments, and how a person gets labeled depends on which aspects of intelligence are being evaluated and how they’re being assessed. Originally, something like 70% of autistics were thought to be intellectually impaired. Now I think they’re saying it’s much lower, more like 30%, due to new methods of measuring intelligence in nonverbal populations. It was a common perception that nonverbal = low IQ but they’re finding now that this isn’t always the case.