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Autism implications of NVLD

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Verdandi
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05 Jul 2011, 9:49 pm

littlelily613 wrote:
I love the book! Unfortunately I am not reading it very quickly because I am also in school right now and have other readings, but I have found it so informative so far. Can't wait to read more of it. Hope you are liking it as well!


Liking it so far. It enabled me to track down a study of a sort I'd been trying to find without much success (a description of executive function deficits in autistic people).

btbnnyr wrote:
Do people with NVLD but not AS have intuitive theory of mind?


I do not know.

Oh, just to add: My IQ spread doesn't fit the pattern for NVLD, as far as I know.

Ettina wrote:
'd say among autistic people (obviously there's plenty of non-autistics at every IQ level) low IQ and severe autism tend to go together for two reasons. First, it's harder to test a lower functioning autistic person, so it's easy to underestimate their IQ. Secondly, if an autistic person has a low IQ, it makes it harder for them to compensate for their autistic-related difficulties.


Speaking as someone who tested as gifted as a child, and who has had a really hard time compensating for many of my difficulties (except social stuff to some extent - but I could only compensate for what I was aware of, and I was not aware of much), I wonder how this works. In a lot of ways, I have trouble with things that are not concrete and explicit, and I am not generally able to think myself out of this a lot of the time. Most of my attempts at coping mechanisms for impairments I was aware of over time fell apart fairly quickly. Admittedly, I would be described as "high-functioning," so I could not say what I would be like if I were unable to score as high on an IQ test, but I do think there's a tendency to overstate the value of intelligence in compensating for impairments, especially when executive function is one of the impairments in question.



Chronos
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05 Jul 2011, 10:20 pm

My experience with those who were low or moderate functioning as children but eventually became fluently verbal is that they have a lot of scatter in their abilities.

They may be able to have a perfectly intelligent conversation about one subject but can't figure out how to work a dish washer, or they might be able to navigate their neighborhood, and even give directions to areas in the local vicinity, but might not be able to tell you how to get to the next city over even when they've been there frequently, or even it's general direction, how far it is, or how long it generally takes.

It was as if a very intelligent person had a series of small strokes which wiped out small areas that stored critical information on every day things.

I don't believe this applies to all people on the lower end of the spectrum. Some may very well be mentally ret*d, others may have some form of locked in syndrome. I doubt every "autistic" individual has the same thing.