On being gifted as well as Aspergers

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When I was about 10, I took the Stanford-Binet test, and I scored between 145-150 in visual-spatial areas, whereas about 130 in verbal areas, which I believe put me in the top 1% at the time, and I was in gifted programs.

When I was tested at age 18, taking the Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale III, I scored about 93 in verbal and 77 in performance, despite the fact that I was doing advanced mathematics and science.

So high ability in math doesn't necessarily correlate to high performance IQ. However, in the Matrix Reasoning subtest of the performance section (which is more like the Raven's Progressive Matrices), I scored in the top 9%, whereas my performance IQ as a whole (including the top 9% figure as a component) is in the bottom 15%.

I have done several online versions of the Raven's test since then but never the official version, and haven't scored higher than about 100, but I just think of these tests as fun puzzles anyway.

My spatial reasoning is all over the place, and really depends on the specific sort of spatial task - for instance, I can easily get lost in building I've been in before on my way to class (happened just this week), but then when I get back home from memory draw a map of the building from my house, including the turns of the stairwell, which for some reason surprises some people that I don't get mixed up about the directions the stairs go, or that I could draw a map of the internal part of the building from memory.

To be honest, what I've been reading a lot of on this thread isn't so much "gifted" behavior as it is an idiosyncratic knowledge of something specific.

In fact, the term "gifted" gets tossed around so much that for me it's lost any real meaning.

I believe that the concensus is that having an high IQ does not make one "gifted", does it? After all, who the hell really cares if someone can recite the top five musical acts of 1983? Is that a gift or simply redundant/useless information the brain forgot to toss away?

I'm for the latter.

In my mind, being gifted is like having a gift that you can give to someone else: Broad superior knowledge of math, the arts or sciences. Anything else is simply a quirk of nature. And to call it "gifted" is an abuse of the term.

Let the stoning commence.

IQ 140+, musical genius...

to be honest...i really really failed at social skills throughout my teenage years and got treated very badly...and theres still a residue of that in my mind today....if i didnt have my musical skills im pretty sure i'd have committed suicide by now...i guess it all balances out...lol x

I took the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale - III when I was 40 - either the schools I attended didn't test, or my parents didn't think it was important enough to remember how I scored.

The tester told me that if I had pursued math, I'd probably now be working on the Space Shuttle program. But since I became math phobic in the third grade and did poorly after that, I scored 50% in math. Performance IQ was 98%.

Z

I know i'm not gifted.... really wish I was.. at something.

i had my IQ tested in many ways as a child.
when i went to an institution (psychiatric adolescent unit for oddly behaving kids) i was the subject of many tests and investigations.

my psychiatrist was a professor who also had psych students from her university classes she taught to consider.

she mounted a major investigation into "giftedness and autism" in order to help further the progress of the diagnosis of AS to be listed in the DSM.

i was 12 in 1984 and that is when i was sent to the adolescent unit.
AS was not listed, but it was known and many people were testing and trying to craft a diagnostic model that would be acceptable and compelling at the same time.

so my psych studied what she called "giftedness and autism".

she studied NT gifted children and compared many vectors of their intelligence to autistic gifted children.

i am not gifted. i am what is termed "talented".

gifted people have an over arching capacity to apply many neurons to any task.

talented people have the capacity to fire logical torpedos in only one narrow direction.

gifted people perform excellently over a wide range of tasks.
talented people perform spectacularly in a narrow field of application.

in australia, children are not told their IQ's. it is a taboo.
i can see why.
if some are identified as 160+ they will become conceited and take less notice of others advice.
if some are told they are 102 they will feel consigned to mediocrity and not try anything with enthusiasm.

imagine a class room of kids where they read out everyones IQ scores.
even me with relatively severe autism can see that this is a very mean thing to do.

how could you read the name out of a poor liitle one who scores 82?

it is better for kids not to know their scores, and in australia, a teacher will lose their job if they reveal it.

my best capacity is for abstract dimensionally developmental concepts.
they can be written into mathematical vehicles for testing.

i like using fractals to think about how to model ideas.
things like spacial densities in the presence of mass (bound energy) , and time rarefactions due to cosmic doldrums can only be rehearsed using fractal animations driven by the appropriate conceptual code.

whatever i will not waffle.

i take no notice of internet IQ tests. they say you are a genius and then you get automatically hooked up to their e-shopping trolley carts.

one test said i was 188. anything to flatter a person to open their wallet.

since i am apparently "talented" rather than "gifted", then my overall IQ score will be lower than the gifted persons IQ.

i can excel in a narrow band and do 3 times better than the gifted person in that single band, but the gifted person goes on to beat me in every other aspect of the test.

When I was diagnosed they said I was gifted. Not the GATE type of gifted, though.

They said it was 'worldly knowledge and emotions', which is odd because aren't a lot of aspies considered 'emotionally immature?'.

(I don't doubt my diagnoses, though. I still stim, dislike people, and melt down.)

I'm not. I have the same world overview as NTs and my IQ is 127.

I havent had a proper IQ test, only a dodgy online one, but I damn hell get called smart a lot, and I was called "above average" by the SEN teacher and I get high marks in most school subjects.

I have a very different view of the world than most people, and I am more intelligent then my peers.

Does that count?

Does "gifted" include a type of 6th sense? I don't really have much of one, but my Mum does, yet she's an NT. I guess my "gift" could be trying to cope at life