Do Intelligent People Automatically Fall on the Spectrum?

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Autism/Asperger definition of "social impairment":



Someone who simply don't have common interests with "normal" people will probably have the 2nd symptom and, at least, the 3rd or the 4th (if he don't talk about their interests, he has "lack of spontaneous seeking to share..."; if he talks, even if other people are not interested, he has "lack of social or emotional reciprocity"). Then, the present social criteria for autism is fulfilled.

Go check out seng.org. There are some similarities, especially if the profoundly gifted person is also introverted, but it's not the same.

+ 1

No I'm useless at everything and I don't care



Keep defining autism as college educated brats you all know whats going to happen:

Mom and Dad come here and see all these fabulous educated autistics and little Johny or Janette is a "abject failure" at school and thus will than probably decide it's OK to get stuck in to their child for been "lazy " or "stupid" you can blame your childs teachers and their peers for your child's failings you know.



on the flip side if the child is a "handful" and they see wonderful educated people here it may stop them from doing the unthinkable I suppose.



Not getting stuck into any one just calling it how I see it ?

[quote="bumble"]How can you tell the difference between Asperger's and Gifted?
But I cannot socialise well at all which suggests Asperger's. Either that or I am a highly introverted NT with underdeveloped social skills because socialising for the sake of it bores me. I do, however, love spending time with people I share a bond with. I just can't stand pointless chitty chat with strangers (in the form of small talk or gossip anyway...a good interesting conversation about a subject of interest is a different matter) lol.

/quote]

I was just reading this very thing in Tony Attwood's book earlier and he said that a NT with a superior IQ may find social interaction 'boring' but their profile of social and linguistic skills will be within normal range..

Well its true at least for the high functioning end of the spectrum.

I'm not sure what the world being flat or not has anything to do with what I said.

"Intelligence" is a subjective term. If someone has evidence that "intelligence" is a measurable, tangible property, that remains constant in every situation....I'd love to hear it. Ironically, all of the traits you listed above are subjective and dependent on culture and personal bias.

I'm sorry if my views make some folks feel less "special."

If you look at "gifted" people, or the people with IQ higher than 145, the vast majority of people will have many autistic traits as well as similar social difficulties to the highest functioning people with ASDs.
This doesn't mean that all gifted people have an ASD: far from it. But there are acknowledged neurological differences in some areas of the brain (linked with cognitive function) in the most gifted of people, and some of these differences are also present in people with ASDs. It is suggested that the "brains [of gifted and "average" people] effectively have a different wiring".
I know 2 gifted children really well who display the vast majority of characteristics on the list below, but are NO WAY autistic.

If you look at "intelligent" people, or even the population as a whole, many people have autistic traits (especially introverts?) but they just are not any where near as severe and problematic as those with ASDs.


Generally accepted traits of giftedness... (that is, with IQ over 145, or 3 standard deviations above mean)
(I'm researching this as part of my Education Masters...)

- asynchronous development
- high cognitive ability
- experience things with high intensity (both sensory and emotional intensity) and more vunerable to emotional and sensory overload
- "notice things others are not aware of"
- experience/relate to world in unique ways: "overall perception of the world is different" and "sensitive to changes in environment"
- Early reading (before school), Large vocabulary
- More able to construct and handle abstractions
- Pick up nonverbal clues and draw inferences
- Keep asking questions- how? and why?
- Work independently, Concentrate for long periods, Intrinsic motivation to learn, very persistent
- interests and eclectic and intensely focused
- Boundless energy/hyperactive
- Respond and relate to adults better than peers
- Like to learn new things/inquisitive
- Eye for details
- Pleasure in intellectual activity
- Know lots of information about wide range of topics and quickly recall
- See relationships in seemingly unconnected objects/ideas
- Rich and vivid imagination
- Excellent memory
- Overactive mind- can't stop thinking
- Often ask embarrassing questions
- have a sense of being alone in the world
- Gifted people usually feel different [Roedel, 1986], and out of step with the rest of society.
- have a need for solitude, and for periods of contemplation in which they are not disturbed by others [Csikszentmihalyi, Rathunde, & Whalen, 1993; Ochse, 1990]
- tend to be very compassionate and have great empathy for other people [Lovecky, 1994]
- perfectionism
- social interaction is "frustrating" and "difficult" due to differences in cognitive understanding.
- "generally feel alienated and isolated, but still won’t do much effort to seek company. Their preference for solitude follows both from the fact that social interaction is intrinsically frustrating to them, and from the fact that they have a low need for stimulation and feedback from others to tackle the problems they have set for themselves"
- high in empathy, able to see things from other points of view.

It's interesting looking through this to see how many traits of giftedness also fit with intelligent, high-functioning autistics in particular.
Of course, big and noticeable difference that's clearly visible: eye contact, body language.

I read this book: link back in the summer (the library had it), and it had chapters where it talked about how people who are gifted may be diagnosed with various different issues, like ADHD and aspergers, instead of having their actual issues recognized. The book talked about the issues 1 chapter at a time, giving lists of symptoms that might be classified as any of these disorders and how they could actually be symptoms of giftedness, also giving reasons why these could be misinterpreted. They also analyzed short case studies of children, and what their treatment reactions were (one that comes to mind is where a kid was medicated for ADHD and he ended up being harmed by it, and it turned out that challenging him more in his school lessons would have actually helped him). Another issue that I read about for the first time in this book is "reactive hypoglycemia," where someone can appear to be ADD only sometimes in the day (and this was actually why the child was having a hard time focussing in one particular class and seemed to be having mood swings in general), and dietary monitoring helped to fix this. They also address the topic of how some could both have some of these issues and be gifted as well, and how this difficult to figure out.

Another thing I remember from the book is that one of the authors pointed out that psychologists where they had been trained (or perhaps in general) had had at most 1 lecture in class during all of their studies on how to correctly diagnose people who have high intelligence. Apparently most of their studies had been about people with "mental disorders." It's like the expression, "if all you have is a hammer... everything looks like a nail."

Overall, I found it to be a very interesting and educational read, and would recommend it.

Erg, stop posting stuff that makes my question whether or not my diagnosis was actually accurate again. Whenever I come to acceptance that I am autistic something shows that turns me around and makes me confused as the doubts form. I was perfectly content until I read the last two posts.

No, not exactly. But come to think of it, those who score as INTJ, INTP or ISTP on the Myers-Briggs are on the high end of the intelligence bell curve, and people with Asperger's tend to score into those categories so there might be a correlation. Of course those are illogical generalizations: most gifted people I've known are just as sociable and friendly as they are intelligent and there are Aspies who are of below-average or normal intellect who don't fit into the reserved, introverted category.

i do not think that people with AS have superior intelligence.
one of the diagnostic reasons i was considered borderline AS (not HFA) is because i am not intellectually ret*d, so i do not think that people with AS are as likely to have low intelligence as non AS people, however i do not think that a sample set of AS people would differ from a sample set of non AS people with regard to above average intelligence.

i think that intelligence is fundamental, and "aptitude" is secondary.
aptitudes are originally formed because of "taste" and there is no accounting for taste.

was mozart as intelligent as newton? was newton as intelligent as shakespeare?
their aptitudes were completely different, so it would be impossible to tell by giving them IQ tests.
newton may not have the literary "intelligence" of shakespeare, and shakespeare would not have the musical "intelligence" of mozart, who in turn would not be as mathematically "intelligent" as newton. they all had different "aptitudes" powered by their fundamental intellect.

if mozart was more interested in numbers than notes, would he have been similarly famous as newton?
if newton was more interested in musical formulae than mathematical ones, then would he have been a master of music like mozart? i think it is possible.

but the fact is that they had different proclivities, and i think aptitude is a product of fundamental intelligence and personal proclivity.

i think fundamental intelligence is simply "basic problem solving ability".
_______
consider the following scenario:
a newborn baby (human) is somehow lost in the wilderness, and a pack of wolves adopts it and nurtures it through childhood. the human has a native IQ of 195 (i know the number is meaningless).

the human never learns language and does not think in words. the human has absolutely no knowledge of the world external to it's local habitat.

one day it is found by scientists, and it's native intelligence is measured using an exceptionally difficult to open puzzle box (fundamental problem). the human is presented with some kind of situation where it is required urgently to open the puzzle box (as it could not be explained to him/her that it is just a test).

the uneducated and illiterate feral human could solve the puzzle box faster than most leading research scientists today, yet would score extremely low in an IQ test.

i think intelligence is the fundamental ability to solve problems, and can be measured in only fundamental ways.

newton, mozart and shakespeare may all be able to solve the fundamental puzzle box similarly, and no faster than the feral grunting human who never was taught anything of an intellectual nature.

I think about this when I watch animals. They can't be given IQ tests but I watch them solve problems in my yard and in the neighborhood and I end up thinking of certain animals as "smarter" because they have good problem solving ability. I watch squirrels cross the street and they visibly check traffic and wait until it's safe to go before they run across. Sometimes the light changes from red to green and the street they thought was safe suddenly has become dangerous. They will either complete their run across the street or turn around and run back to their starting point, depending on which distance is shortest. Figuring out which distance is shortest requires a guessed calculation. When I see them in the street I either swerve around them, slow down or (if there is no traffic behind me) come to a complete stop. In this way I have managed to never hit a squirrel. But it isn't just my driving that saves them. I can see them taking the trajectory of my car into account as they decide where to run next.

Nevertheless I sometimes see dead squirrels that have been hit by cars. I wonder if human traffic is accidentally making squirrels smarter. The ones that are very good at calculating car trajectories manage to survive and have babies. This ability to make a split second calculation of a car's trajectory and decide whether it is safe to cross or which direction to go if caught by unexpected traffic is probably genetic. We are putting evolutionary pressure on them to be able to think that way.

Turkeys don't seem to be as smart. They are unable to problem solve in this way. Unlike squirrels, they walk straight into traffic, never waiting for a safe time to cross, and they don't alter their course at all to adjust for car trajectories the way squirrels do. But I don't see dead turkeys in the road. Instead I see all traffic grinding to a halt until they cross because they are so large. Unlike squirrels, they are under no selection pressure to develop the ability to gauge traffic. So I consider them less smart than squirrels because they don't have to be. They aren't required to solve that problem.They survive to have babies regardless.

The problem that needs to be solved in my yard is how to get the birdseed out of the series of bird feeders I have put outside. It's a battle of wits between me and the squirrels and they always win. I haven't yet been able to put out a bird feeder they can't defeat. Meanwhile the far less intelligent turkeys are also going into yards. A friend told me that she watched from her window as a turkey wandered into her yard and then ran around in a panic because it couldn't figure out how to get back out again (a problem that squirrels solve quite easily). She had to go into the yard and herd it out like a sheep herding dog.

Thank you for your thoughtful response.

I like your way of thinking about "intelligence," but I find we still run into the issue of defining what constitutes a "problem" and if there are "problems" that require "more" or "less" of what is considered "intelligence."



Turkeys evolved to solve "turkey problems." Squirrels evolved to solve "squirrel problems."

It's apples and oranges. Turkeys are good at solving the problems turkeys deal with. If they were not, there would be no more turkeys.

If you have a preference for "squirrel problems" more so than "turkey problems" that's a reflection of personal bias.

Well, aspie or not, you are gifted anyway. So don't be suprised to recognising yourself in the list. There is at least a point not very compatible with autism though.

The simple answer is no.

Eg, I don't feel nearly as smart as feel I'm sounding from what I say about myself. I know I've got problems, more than just being gifted, and I'm pretty sure I'm autistic and I'm just getting paranoid over nothing. I felt a lot more autistic when taking the aspie quiz than when I was taking the AQ test though.