Normal Intelligence

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So I read this study that said autism does not cause mental retardation however because communication problems it can appear it does. Does anyone know where I can get a copy of that study??? It is really, really important I get a copy as soon as possible.

studys suck there never right

It does cause mental retardation for 1/4 or so with unbiased tests (it's 2/3 with biased ones). It's of a "different" type of mental retardation compared to generic mental retardation though, as there's usually areas of strengths and weaknesses in nearly all cases. The 1/4 above comes from a recent book in Europe, so there's more "HFA" than "LFA" when unbiased tests are administered.

Do you refer to the paper by..., I think it was Michelle Dawson in regards to using the Raven test? There were still people with MR when they took the Raven test compared to the standardized ones IIRC, though most seemed to improve with such a test (which makes sense as performance IQ is usually higher in Autism, and Raven isn't a verbal IQ test).

I guess you mean to ask whether autism itself causes MR.

That question cannot be answered, you must take into account:

MR is a label for scoring under a certain score on a standardised IQ test and being impaired in several adaptive behaviour. It's not something to touch, something that can be tested for in the blood or anything.

And what Danielismyname indicated is that autism can grossly interfere with testing for an IQ. And if autism impairs skills due to communication issues, interaction problems and repetitive actions and if that same person scores - for whatever reason - under 70 (or so) on an IQ test, they are autistic and MR.

Autism can go with and without MR.

MR is an additional diagnosis. Just like autism is diagnosed not by identifying a genetic cause, a neurological abnormality, Mr can be like that.

Sometimes professional can identify the cause of MR, sometimes they think they can identify it and sometimes they have no idea.

As said before, no blood test or anything. Just like when you score 130 on an IQ test, you're not suddenly magically different from a person who scores 129 or 128 or 127 etc.

Scoring 69 instead of 73 can make one person MR and the other not. Nobody would notice any difference between the 2 people. It's just a difference on a standardised test of 4 points.

But since we don't know what causes autism, the same unknown cause may be connected to both autism and MR in a person. So far, studies suggest that the reasons for autism in autistic people are very diverse.

Other than that, there's a lot on the web about how autism can interfere with testing for an IQ on a standard IQ test. That's what Danielismyname was talking about.

It's more on the side then anything.

I guess it's a matter of how you define "mental retardation". (Which is, by the way, not what my usename stands for. )

So, if "mental retardation" means scoring low on an IQ test, then you get one answer.

If "mental retardation" refers to an actual difference in intelligence, you get a different one.

For the 2nd version, my thinking is, no, it doesn't.