Gifted or Aspie?

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Wow, that's a great list.

Interesting that as a teen, I easily had a bunch of the traits from both sides. My gifted NT teen has a bunch of the traits from the left, and very few on the right. So based on my very limited data set of two, I'd say the list is a pretty useful tool.

I am both gifted and an aspie. I have 16 traits on the gifted side and 27 on the aspie side.

I was in my school's gifted and talented program. The other kids in the program had no problems socially... at least compared to me. Many of them were actually popular. Also, as an adult, I know several gifted adults. While they are very different from the majority due to their giftedness, they are very socially skilled. Their differences are actually all socially positive ones that make them more popular.(varied interests, higher empathy, etc) There is a huge difference between them and me. They have none of the same problems, and are actually socially talented. This matches what I had read about gifted having better than average social skills even though the stereotype says the gifted are all socially inept.

Some gifted might find fitting in difficult because their interests are different or they can't relate intellectually with others. However, they usually have no problems with knowing the social rules, reading nonverbal cues, sensory issues, executive functioning problems etc.

Not reading body language intuitively hint to asperger as the clumsiness. Sensory issues and special interests can be explained by giftedness though. And yes, you can be both.

That's SO helpful, thanks. There's much difficulty in reaching the conclusion of "Asperger's" for the so-called gifted individual, because some of what people consider to typify Asperger's, or inclusion into the "spectrum," is sometimes nowhere to be seen in this personality ("gifted"). Asperger's with gifted characteristics is the only thing that "explains" me and my whole life. "But you have empathy, but you can read people's expressions, but you have had limited success in relationships and social settings, but you don't 'flap'," and so on.

I'm what happens when a supposedly gifted child goes 50 years without ever being recognized as gifted. I'm just flighty and temperamental and have a disc-drive for a memory, but I'm so good with personal interaction that Asperger's never showed up on my radar. They used to say I was Attention Deficit with depressive personality, those that didn't say I was just spoiled and lazy and "hard to take." (This is my Mom's lifetime assessment of me, given 6 months ago)

My parenthetical statement above shows that parents aren't always the best judge of what's really "up" in a kid's head. Nothing against well-intended and loving parents, of course. Most parents aren't also experts in psychological disorders or syndromes. (it is not often co-morbid )

I have some doubts about the validy of it.

What everybody wants to know when they ask "gifted or aspie?" is "my (or your/his/her) social eccentricities are a sign of asperger or are simply a side-effect of giftness?".

But, looking to the points, the authors of the table seems to largely discard the possibility that giftness could create social eccentricities, meaning that, by this checklist, everybody who is in doubt "asperger or only gifted" will allmost surely be considered as having AS.

Specially the points "Indifferento to social norms of dress", "lacks age-adequate coordination" and "avoids team sports", are, in popular culture, so associated with the "gifted" stereotype that I doubt that they only occur in gifteds with AS - a whole gallery of film, TV and literary characters of A-students without fashion sense and unathletics could not be the result of only 0,06% of the population (if 2% of the population is gifted and 0,3% has Asperger's, it is expectable that AS+GFT will be around 0,06%)

That would be assuming they are independent, when it seems likely that is not the case and they have significant correlation. Anyway, BAP extends far beyond the range of people actually diagnosed with AS.

since when does making good grades, determine how intelligent you are? If that were the case, id be reatardad.

You might do well to read a book entitled "The Spark" by Kristine Barnett; it's a mother's first-person account of raising her autistic, highly gifted (as in academic savant) son; he didn't speak until the age of four, but was attending college full-time by the age of 10 with a post-master's degree understanding of maths and science. It's very interesting, and depending on the extend of your gift, it might resonate with you. Autism and giftedness being mixed is such a ubiquitous concept that it's almost cliche. Most people seem to think that to be autistic is to have some savant splinter skill, when in fact such skills only show up in 10-20% of the autistic population.

I wonder if the concept of "twice exeptional" makes sense if the 2 "exceptions" are not independent.

Put it in another way - if the (or some) symptoms of AS are, at a significant level, associated with being "gifted", they should be really considered "symptoms of AS" when they occur in a "gifted" person? Or, in these cases, should be considered "symptoms" of "giftness" who appens to be similar to AS (like the dark skin of the Fidjians are similar to the dark skin of the Congolese)?

Well twice exception isn't really directed towards AS, it's for learning disorders in general. While giftedness is correlated with several mental disorders I don't think it's really correlated with learning disorders as that's usually regarded as being the opposite.

I am gifted and have aspergers. I got myself tested and got an IQ of 175. I am kind of nerdy. But one of my interests is health and fitness, so I am kind of an healthy muscular nerd. I often hear that a lot of gifted people are pedantic. I am also a bit pedantic. A friend of mine is also gifted, and he is extremely pedantic. It's not really fun to be around him at sometimes. The only problem with me is that I feel that aspergers hold me back at some area's, like understanding questions on exams etc. But that's hard to explain for me. I am strong in logic thinking but I can't do it when I am at school. Only when I am in a comfortable area and alone. That's why I actually skip a lot of the lessons at school, so I can study by myself at home.

This, exactly. I came down more on the "gifted" side on that sheet, but with some AS tendencies too. But put the two together, and you have a pretty good description of me. There are some instances where I see aspects of my personality on both sides of the chart. For example, I had friends throughout school, but I have a hard time approaching people and initiating friendships (and maintaining them if I don't see the person every day).

I'll have to do some more research on this...

Would you mind if I shot you a PM?