Mental Retardation

Post Reply New Topic

I personally think that autism does not cause mental retardation, I think that communication problems and the inability to overcome them prevent learns which gives the illusion of mental retardation.

You can have both conditions.

That is true but is it the autism that is causing the mental retardation or is something else causing it???

I remember hearing about a teenage girl who they tested her IQ, they said her IQ was around 30. Well they found out that the test was wrong, they rid did the test and took into account her communication problems and found her IQ was actually 110.

That's an interesting point. Mental Retardation is such a vague term I don't think educators use it these days.

autism causes neither MR or high intelligence,these are addons to autism.

and communication difficulty as an autie is only one problem of getting an MR score when are not noticibly MR,there's a lot more to it-imagination difficulty,multiple learning disabilities,visual perception difficulties,information processing difficulties,and language difficulties are just a few of the reasons that affect IQ tests.

Autism is a neurological disorder that is separate from your innate intelligence, MR affects your innate intelligence. But many times both go hand in hand.

It's important to realize that the mental retardation in Autism is different to people who have mental retardation by itself; in Autism, the skill development and cognitive pattern is uneven, whereas those with basic MR are fairly even in all areas. A person with Autism who also has MR may have a very good memory and recall, but this is only one area, so their overall IQ will still be in the MR range. Some people with Autism are more developed in areas that are important to IQ tests and score within normal (about 1/3), but this doesn't mean they will be less severe in regards to what they can or can't do, as they very well may be lacking in areas that are just as important to functioning in society.

Yes, it does cause mental retardation, but it's of a different type than MR by itself.

For Autism, an overall IQ of under 75 ranges from 40 to 80% in the US depending on the tests used. The 40% figure comes from unbiased tests.

So how does autism make someone mentally ret*d??

The problem here is that communication problems preventing learning is one way IQ can be lowered. The environment can have an effect on IQ that can take you from average to mild MR in non-autistic people. Autism could do the same thing.

The "nice" thing about this cultural/familial MR is that it can often be remedied, especially if you start early, by providing a learning-friendly environment. That is why it is so important to teach autistic people to communicate; abstract language, if you can manage it, really gives you a big boost in the types of education you can access. There are cases where the verbal/performance gap is so big that you have somebody with a gifted performance IQ and a verbal IQ in the severe range... These seem to be the cases where mental retardation is assumed to have happened because the person doesn't "look smart" and doesn't score well on traditional IQ tests; I think in those cases they have used some non-word-oriented way to learn.

If we could find out how they do it, we might be able to teach autistic children who cannot master language, and do it much earlier. (The earlier the better--the younger the child, the quicker they learn, in general. Kids' brains are more adaptable than adults'.)

depts.washington.edu/chdd/gist/autism%20journal%20club/DawsonMottron_2007_autistic_intelligence.pdf
A good analysis by Michelle Dawson and others of intelligence in autistics (note that the study seems to be towards "LFA" rather than HFA or Aspies) and the study concludes that autistic intelligence has been seriously underestimated and is likely no less than that of neurotypicals.

http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=20218509
That's just an abstract- you have to pay for the full study. But researchers at Keio University Medical School concluded that Aspies have superior fluid intelligence as compared to neurotypicals.

Both of these studies relied on the Raven's Progressive Matrices IQ test, which has been shown to be more reliable than the standard tests such as Weschler, Stanford-Binet, etc ad nauseam, but is normally not used as often as these other ones. The Raven's test primarily tests pattern recognition abilities, which is probably why autistics tend to score higher on it than on more verbally-biased tests.

Your first link had an interesting feature--the two graphs of autistic and non-autistic adults and children. The non-autistic kids and adults had similar IQs; but the autistic adults had IQs higher than the autistic children. That would seem to mean that IQs increase over time in autistic people, rather than staying the same as they do with NTs. It could be their test-taking ability, their communication ability, or their general cognitive skills, but it seems like there's something fundamentally different about autistic intelligence as opposed to NT intelligence.

How does Autism make someone socially ret*d? The same answer: whatever causes Autism. As I said, the development of skills and abilities is uneven, and this is what brings people with Autism "down" to the area of MR on standardized tests.

Orwell,

The children in her study had HFA and LFA (1/3 had LFA going by their results on standard IQ tests); pretty much all of them were classed as HFA by the Raven test.

Remember, HFA and LFA are both Autism/Autistic Disorder. Asperger's is its own disorder in the US, and it wasn't included in this study.

No no I asked how does make autism people ret*d not how does make them socially ret*d. I know NTs that are socially ret*d don't make the ret*d when it comes to intelligence.

I disagree with your idea that autism directly causes mental retardation in people, I think communication indirectly prevents learning.

As a psychologist I have tested children with autism on an IQ test and the score indicated that they were also Mentally ret*d. However, in some of those situations, I would not give a dual diagnosis because I felt that the IQ score was not valid because those with Autism interpret the world so differently. There has to be a lot more evidence than an IQ score for me to consider diagnosing a child with Autism as Mentally ret*d as well.

I have think I have some learning disabilities but mental retardation, I think that's different.

I think we lack both the understanding and the means to conclusively assign a Yes or No to this question.