In an earlier post I had estimated that on an IQ scale where the general U.S. population has a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, autistics have a mean of 72 with an SD of 23. So although the average autistic is much less intelligent than the average neurotypical, their greater variability makes them over-represented among the greatest minds.
However my analysis was based on diagnosed autistics. It’s entirely possible that there’s a large population of autistics who escape diagnosis, and this group likely has a much higher average IQ than the diagnosed autistics because they were too high functioning to be diagnosed with a mental problem. In other words, diagnosed autistics are not a random sample of autistics.
How could one get a random sample of autistics? Find a random sample of Americans and give all of them a brain scan. Only those who scored autistic on the brain scan would be considered autistic, regardless of any diagnostic or behavioral history. If this were done, we would likely find the average autistic IQ to be much higher than 72 since such a sample might include many high income computer geeks, university professors and many scientists.
You do realize that so-called low-functioning autistics and high-functioning ones have distinct disorders? I would find the link but I’m about to get drunk watching the boxing match.
What a coincidence. I’m about to get drunk too. On my way out to the bar. LOL!
No, they don’t. This is part of the reason why “Autistic Disorder” and “Asperger’s Syndrome” now fall under the single umbrella term “Autism Spectrum Disorders” in the DSM 5. None of the criteria that distinguished them were found to reliably predict distinct developmental outcomes.
“High functioning” and “low functioning” have never been clinically valid terms. They’re based on stereotypes and assumptions more than anything else.
Dont always trust the DSM.
I don’t always trust the DSM, but in this case, the diagnoses were merged for good reason. Which was that the criteria that distinguished them were arbitrary, and not meaningfully predictive of anything else.
(Speech before or after 18 months, and delay in self-care skills or lack thereof. That’s it.)
autism shouldn’t be in the dsm as it’s a neurological disorder which occurs in early childhood.
that is, it has many non-behavioral symptoms and unlike SCZ, depression, manic depression, ocd, etc. it is congenital or occurs at age 2 or 3.
anti-hereditists should have no problem accepting that genuine autism, like mental retardation, is “genetic”, but would deny that purely psychiatric disorders are genetic.
”average autistics are dumb than neurotypicals because they score lower in iq tests on average”.
Always the same psychosis. In the post about (again) ”smart naturally get to top”, you observe that their narcisism is causing unecessary polemic here.
Again,
simplistic post based on a set of personal conclusions about something that is not so easy as you think, again, to understand.
The psychometric fact that autistics tend to score lower in iq tests doesn’t mean that they are on average, less smart, but it is impossible for you try to understand it. Dogma.
My personal impression is that autistics independent of their iq or psychometric scores, are
smarter than the average neurotypical ( white british standard) and little savant skills called ”obsessive and narrow” interests seems a important component of this unusual profile.
Is very common for autistic intelligence to have higher discrepancy between their cognitive weakness and strenghts.
Other detail that you dispise is about the different lateralizations between autistic and neurotypical brains. I think that psychometric tests measure indirectly usual-normative brain lateralization and autistics will tend to have unusual-anormative brain lateralization. Obsessive interests since early childhood can have a some rule in this lower scores if is really necessary use iq as fundamental parameter. And especially for autistics, is probably a stupid thing to do.
I read higher iq prevent severe manifestation of mental disorders. It can be right for non-autistics, but for autistics the idea of higher functioning do not relate Always with higher iq. The high functioning autistics are those who no have severe neuro-physiological symptoms like uncontrolable repetitive movements or blindness, based in this perspective, because intelectual high functioning will be based in other components as higher intelligence ( not necessarily iq’sss) or creativity.
My personal impression is that autistics independent of their iq or psychometric scores, are
smarter than the average neurotypical ( white british standard) and little savant skills called ”obsessive and narrow” interests seems a important component of this unusual profile.
Is very common
If you measure intelligence by creativity, autistics are probably smarter than their IQs suggest, but if you measure intelligence by money & status, autistics are probably dumber than their IQs suggest
So on balance IQ tests might accurately measure their intelligence
Money and status ARE NOT intelligence, to measure intelligence, is need measure intelligence, period. (not only memorization capacity).
Yes, rich and economically well stabilized people TEND to be TECHNICALLY smarter. But humans are BIODIVERSE, cognitive capacity include. Cognitive diversity is not only in quantitative terms like iq, but also in qualitative terms. Psychological traits are in fact, cognitive traits, cognitive-interactive traits. Then, is not wrong to say ”emotion capacity is a cognitive trait” because psychological = cognitive, same thing. Psychologues separate this terms because their beliefs in abstract interpretations about human behavior ph(r)enomenology.
You give to therm ”intelligence” to all virtuous characteristiscs and use mundane examples like ”earn money” as perfect example of intelligence manifestation. In other words, you dispise the very important different ways to be intelligent, specially about empathy. Farsebook’s create a campaign to help people in Nepal but the creator of farsebook are billionaire. This vampire ask people to make donations. 10 million dollars is a small change for this aberration….
You need understand that our personal achievement CAN correlate with our intelect level OR NOT, but as i love to say here,
yeaaaaaah, is more complex….
I think smart people are smart (or creative people) independent of their achievements or lack of. Like, smart people are smart like taller people are taller. The differences is that height is easy to be observed than intelligence.
I doubt that real intelligence can evolve with very negative traits. Real intelligence is completely, perfectly correlate with our condition as social complex species. The improvement of complexity need mitigation of conflicts like happens with a complex machine.
Maybe, no there a natural and predominant correlation between high empathy and human intelligence, like Sisyphean said here, but if we want live in a perfect world, real empathy is required obviously. But no ”pathological” altruism or naive-stupid altruism.
In America, we have these useless charity organizations/endeavors that operate out of status, fame and more money. Pathetic. They are useless pieces of garbage, and they don’t do anything to help the average person whom they are suppose to serve, because they run the organization to benefit the people who run it financially before it helps the individual in need. America is a joke.
It’s based on diagnosed autistics…and it’s also been shown that IQ tests highly reliant on verbal abilities wind up underestimating the visual reasoning abilities of many autistic people. Tested with test formats that rely on visual reasoning and not language ability, many autistic people previously tested as intellectually disabled test in the average or above-average range.
Pumpkin,
i think your official concept of intelligence is not about intelligence itself or total human intelligence but SOCIAL intelligence only, indeed, the capacity to ”adapt”. Yes, higher social intelligence tend to correlate with iq, extroversion, and many times with high ‘functioning’ psychopathy.
But look for complexity of this situation. Many people have potential to adaptability BUT social context isn’t favorable.
Social intelligence tend to be contextually different than emotional intelligence.
JS,
Yes, here in Blankaland happen the shame thing. Celebs tend to be sneaks, blind ( Marie Antoinette Syndrome) or conscious ( anti social personality spectrum).
m savage has a very high “social IQ”. he’s a douche…and SHORT…but he’s right about child psychiatry…
children are easy MARKS.
and parents are STUPID.
and if you didn’t know, or you haven’t checked it out, Thomas Sowell is a black guy.
Social intelligence = capacity to adapt because we live in a social environment. Capacity to ”understand” the social environment and use it for own. Social intelligence is a proto-psychopathic ”emotional” intelligence, the dark side of emotional intelligence, specially in the sociopathic context of ”western” societies, today and ever. Social intelligence= competition and contextual adaptation.
Emotional intelligence = capacity to understand emotions, feelings and intentions of other people and with the strong tendency to answer empathetically. Emotionally smart people tend to be chronically and contextually disable in psychopathic social environment like Murrica, Brownzil, etc… world, with relative exceptions. Emotional intelligence= cooperation and universal adaptation.
Research has shown that while the “low functioning autistic” has difficulty in the area of communication, they still demonstrate what could be described as high average to above average intelligence. Being on the autism spectrum only means that the individual has one of any number of genetic mutations that are now being associated with higher levels of intelligence. Now I’m not saying, that with all the co-morbidity that individuals on the spectrum suffer from, that there aren’t members of the autism community that have intellectual disabilities. What I am saying is that they are few and far between. The tests you site for your argument are akin to giving a blind person a visually intensive test and declaring them a retard when they fail. Apologies to any I’ve offended, I don’t have a better analogy but when I come up with one I’ll be sure to encode it into the English language. We don’t need under educated buffoons driving us back to the dark ages.