Can a HF person on the spectrum have low IQ?

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When I was a kid, I was considered moderately mentally ret*d. Not as an insult, but as an actual medical diagnosis. I was pretty much severely low functioning autistic as a toddler and little kid and didn't even learn to speak until I was four or five. Yeah, so technicaly I don't actually have Asperger's Syndrome. Most of what I had to say as a kid was just memorized "scripts" from movies and TV shows or things other people had said to me. Maybe that contributed to people's assumptions of me. When I had an IQ test as a kid, I was never told it was an IQ test and didn't find out the results until years later. It said I had a below averege and that I basicaly would never amount to anything in the future. As I said, I had no idea when I was being given an IQ test, the waking hours of my childhood practicaly consisted of being rushed around uptown Cincinatti to see psychologist after psychologist who mostly just spoke to my parents.

I'm considered full blown high functioning. My IQ is under 80 but there are some things I am able to understand so it's not like I have a bad IQ. Most of the time I think it's due to processing difficulties and memory problems that I have. I've actually been told I have a learning disability so... yeah. As well as some slight developmental delays as well.

Like others said, I didn't speak until about four or five but because I was so limited with speech and communication, I actually had to take speech and language therapy until the eighth grade. Now, I have trouble with verbal and emotional expression.

IQ tests for autistic people is an interesting topic.

I work(ed) with (non-autistic) kids and teens and dealt with their parents (who were the same) who have low IQs to mild MR (up to moderate MR). They are awesome people, the kids especially because they are smart in various ways that come across as fun and totally handy even if their IQs are low.

From an autistic point of view - from my point of view - it totally puts things into perspective if you're gifted and considered very hf but that 6yo non-autistic kid with limited speech, so-so parenting and IQ scores between 53-64 has this so much better social intuition than you (albeit experience and intellectual ability usually let you perform better than him - but noticing how socially smart such a kid is without all the deduction and experience is awe-ing). And there isn't just one, there are many people like that.

So, I wrote that because I never thought before that even children with mental retardation act "dumb" (or look dumb or talk dumb or whatever else people say sometimes) or whatever ridiculous impressions people have of it because they don't really know it, try to picture it and don't do a realistic job at all. (That's like trying to imagine someone autistic before you learnt of what autism all means in depth.)

When autistic people here on WP (and not on WP) say their IQ is low and in a similar range as that of those kids, it's really different a lot of the time.

What's definitely the same for both groups: the low IQ score is "legit", if legit means that is how well they performed on that IQ test at the moment when they were tested. If they had a good time during testing, that low IQ score is also likely to reflect how well they can, at their current age, met the standardised expectations of the test.

What's often quite different between those groups: the abilities behind/beyond the score.

I can totally see (and have seen, as in the case of the parents and the teens) the non-autistic people with the low IQ scores do and talk about quite a lot of things people here and out there in the world with a low Q score can do and talk about too. What I can't imagine is most of them being able to do in the same way all/most of the things one autistic person with a low IQ score tends to be very good at. Not sure I can get that cross but what I mean is:

For a lot of autistic people (whatever their IQ) everywhere, they struggle hard with some things and even basic abilities but there are things they can do rather well.

People with a low IQ score but without autism and without another peculiar we-give-you-uneven-skills disorders, they tend to be be equally good/bad at most things they can do. They have a few things they do worse than most other things they can and a few things they can do much better than most other things they can do.

That's what it's like for many "average" typical people too, a few talents, a few horrible weaknesses but the rest of their skills are within a narrow range.

Autistic people tend to be different with their extreme impairments and other much better abilities. Maybe if you think of extremes, it gets easier to imagine. Think of someone like, oh I don't know, Tito Mukhopadhyay (link) perhaps and try labelling his person in a most descriptive, general way (because people put in boxes is what happens a lot) as "low-functioning" or "high-functiong", as generally "very able and skilled" or "very impaired".

Drives some ASD specialists insane if you respond "very lf? but look at what he can do-" and "hf? look at someone who acts all different and gets called hf for it, are they both hf then?" (though some will resort to answering "he's a very rare exception" as if other autistic people do not have similar uneven skills and impairments).

I found this true within the group of autistic people too. I watched My name is Khan yesterday, then was reminded of a past discussion which led to me to think: the spontaneous, unrelated/off-topic social insight (into social consequences) some my age or older with autism and a low IQ score or generally a diagnosis of autism and "severe" of "lf autism" have is so much higher than mine. I'm good with that but one would expect that anyone like me would have just as much or more of that intuitive insight for being able to do other things pretty decently that another person with "more severe" autism struggles with more.

But, autism doesn't seem to work like that even for autistic people which is why comparing and assuming what someone can do without asking if that assumption is correct so confusing, mind-boggling and set up for failure. That's what I learnt partly from on here though I would love to know some set of neat general but very descriptive labels.

Yes, I'm a HF person but I have a very low IQ. My grades in school were abysmal. My highest grade was a C, the rest were all D's and E's. Someone could teach me something multiple times but it still doesn't sink in. My mind just wanders and I go into my own little world, if someone says something to me I have to ask them to repeat themselves because I just can't get it the first time, it's weird. I definitely blame my poor concentration for my low IQ. I'm without doubt a slow learner, learning something is a slow process with me. It does annoy me when people say all autistics are geniuses and are very intelligent. Honestly, we're not all like that. I'm definitely no Isaac Newton or Temple Grandin!

The results from this study concern me:

BACKGROUND:
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) was once considered to be highly associated with intellectual disability and to show a characteristic IQ profile, with strengths in performance over verbal abilities and a distinctive pattern of 'peaks' and 'troughs' at the subtest level. However, there are few data from epidemiological studies.
METHOD:
Comprehensive clinical assessments were conducted with 156 children aged 10-14 years [mean (s.d.)=11.7 (0.9)], seen as part of an epidemiological study (81 childhood autism, 75 other ASD). A sample weighting procedure enabled us to estimate characteristics of the total ASD population.
RESULTS:
Of the 75 children with ASD, 55% had an intellectual disability (IQ<70) but only 16% had moderate to severe intellectual disability (IQ<50); 28% had average intelligence (115>IQ>85) but only 3% were of above average intelligence (IQ>115). There was some evidence for a clinically significant Performance/Verbal IQ (PIQ/VIQ) discrepancy but discrepant verbal versus performance skills were not associated with a particular pattern of symptoms, as has been reported previously. There was mixed evidence of a characteristic subtest profile: whereas some previously reported patterns were supported (e.g. poor Comprehension), others were not (e.g. no 'peak' in Block Design). Adaptive skills were significantly lower than IQ and were associated with severity of early social impairment and also IQ.
CONCLUSIONS:
In this epidemiological sample, ASD was less strongly associated with intellectual disability than traditionally held and there was only limited evidence of a distinctive IQ profile. Adaptive outcome was significantly impaired even for those children of average intelligence.

Although I attended a grammar school, I believe I have a low IQ. I was the worst in my class at science and geography, and I was only a C grade student in the other subjects. My reading comprehension is appalling because I have an unbelievably poor imagination, my working memory is shocking, I have absolutely no attention span, and I really struggle to visualise things, too. Thus I am neither creative nor logical.

Aspie with a low IQ right here.

Last time I was tested it came around as 90. Most of you here a smarter than me.

Shahunshah:

Do you have a breakdown of how you scored in individual subtests?

When I was 15, I scored something like 80-90 in some subtests, but 150 or above in others.

But you're pretty good in your social studies/history. Do you do well in science, too?

I heard, in Australia and New Zealand, that you have to have decent marks to go into relatively prestigious educational university tracks.

There's a guy from Australia named Outrider, who's also a pretty smart guy like you.

He used to get many "C's," too.

I wonder if the educational system is skewed against creativity down in Oz and New Zealand.