Well hell, I'm LFA

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Which I don't mind.

IQ isn't really a good picture for intelligence.

You won't get that. IQ tests are supposed to measure 'overall intelligence' and there probably is no such thing. It is akin to an imaginary test that measures 'overall birdness.' Starlings score high, penguins and emus score low, Kiwis very low, parrots sort of middling-high, and the reasonable person says, "Uh, what is this test supposed to be talking about, again? Does that even make sense?"

All intelligence, like birdness, is specialized.

i think pigeons actually best humans in shape and object recognition, the stuff that IQ tests are based on.

Yes. And cats learn to copy behavior from other creatures while most dogs fail, and squirrels run around an open-ended barrier without any trial-and-error while most dogs struggle to learn this, octopuses learn to open a container quicker than toddler-age humans and so do crows, and bees are better at recognizing human faces than I am, though my IQ measured somewhere around 143 if I remember right.

This thread made me feel depressed. I am not taking an IQ test, ever.

Last edited by Mw99 on 25 Feb 2009, 9:32 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I find it hard to believe her IQ is that low. I also heard she is severely autistic but it just doesn't look like it. I have seen her on youtube.

Daniel what's the name of the IQ test they gave you?

I don't find that accurate at all..

Look at how well you write.

maybe it just means he is slow. sort of like a computer with a slow processor. it gets the job done, but it takes it quite a bit of time.

I think she's stubborn, which helps. People do underestimate what someone with a low-normal IQ can do. There's this whole cult around IQ, but all it was originally intended to do was place kids in the right class in school, since some are ahead of others since they tend to learn faster.

One thing people have commented on with me is how fast I learn new concepts. It took me a week or two to get stuff on one issue and someone said it took her a year to go the same distance. And she was normal. I think that's all it is for most people, is how fast you pick up new concepts.

Mw99,

The standard one, which is called Wechsler something something.

For the most part, I only answered the Matrix and Block Design ones (you know, the little pictures, and figuring out what comes next; that's the subscore where I scored high on, the rest were very, very bad). Everything else, I just couldn't answer (I drew a blank).

I'm betting you'd score higher than me, unless your cognitive pattern is as splintered as mine.

Danielsmyname, my performance - not necessarily in relation to IQ tests (which i'm not really into) but in general - is severely affected by external environment. Twice i attempted university and on both occasions i had to leave because i could not cope with the absorption/comrehension of information PLUS the timetable PLUS the crowds PLUS the external stimuli. I did well academically in my final two years mainly because i had a principal who allowed me to come in the mornings, pick up assignments and then go home and work in the routined isolation of the home.
I relate very much to what you are saying in this regard. We are highly sensitised in some instances and this means our individual performance can be profoundly influenced by environmental factors.

Of course, the WAIS-IV [or whatever] will only measure certain things. If for example I was given the Raven Matrices test, I'd probably score in the high to gifted range, rather than the mentally ret*d range. As always, it's what the test actually tests. Since most of the questions on the WAIS-## are asked in a verbal format, and since I have massive trouble with reading (I don't even read most posts people make (I just can't), which is why I run into many problems with arguments), of course I'm going to suck at it. Now, throw a test that's all about blocks and shapes, and I'll do very well.

You're right. My intelligence is specialized (parts of things and how they fit together), plus I have the typical memory of someone with Autism.

It's all gifts and curses.

Spokane_Girl,

Donna Williams says the last IQ test she took she scored 70. I have no reason to doubt her claim.

No one,

There's a difference between mild mental retardation and profound mental retardation in those with Autism; the former usually are moderate in severity, whereas the latter are the most severe. HFA and AS are on the "mild" end (>70 IQ). Well, this is what they say.

My reference to Attwood is from a couple of psychologists there assuming that I'm "smart" in the standard way, without even bothering to test me.

After spending a lot of time figuring out how they came to the conclusion of IQ I realized the Answer = that if you are an outlier in the correlation you do-not-count. And if you try to get any special treatment before A: figuring out what diagnosis slip of paper you need ... then B: getting that slip of paper from a " professional " to verify what you already knew ... people will call you an egocentric prick. People will not believe that you are smart when you lack slips of paper to back it up. Slips of paper like GPA, class grades, ACT/SAT, IQ, and whatever else. So if you get a low IQ score, and you do poorly in your education according to slips of paper, you will technically not be allowed to be smart according to society. And if you try to say smart things you are likely to be treated like a child.

Slips of paper are important... why? Because people are sheep. This cannot be beaten until you find people that understand your situation, or you can get to the right people smart enough to understand you even if you present the information in a strange way. Of course if you get to that level and nobody understands any of it you might want to rethink your position

Hmm... I think my point is to not worry about it. You know how smart/capable you are... slips of paper aren't anything more than a pat on the back. The only curse is that most people are stupid and you're not.

Tangent/example: Spelling... people relating your grammar/spelling to your intelligence drives me nuts.

Doesn't mean it's accurate. I used to score in the ret*d range too when I was little and I wasn't ret*d. The score was just inaccurate because it went up every year and then I finally scored above average when I was 12. That could have been inaccurate too because after taking IQ tests for so many years in school and by doctors, I had good practice at them.

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale edition IV, yeah. It does test several processes while the Ravens test one. The earlier edition included the Ravens, or something much like them.

A large peice of it measures your retention of facts in the 'general cultural information' category and is biased towards the general information transmitted by the American school system. You are a culture of one, and may as well be a 19th century Polynesian in terms of that part of the test's ability to measure your cognitive function. If it was biased towards the general information transmitted by Star Trek it would measure the same sort of function but you would have scored very high.

Another bit of it actually is essentially about social conventions, a third about conforming to a classification system of likeness and difference, also culturally transmitted to large degree. I'd hazard that Aristotle would have had a rough time with it.

Your score is hardly surprising for that test. From what you've said regarding yourself here, I would anticipate you to do just as you did -- fail on about half of the test and rocket your score up into the 'mildly ret*d' range by doing spectacularly well on the other half. Add in the reading and language-out difficulties that are not evident in your behavior on the forum, and really, the result is sort of impressive. (Your vocabulary problem is interesting, and obviously the test's demanding that you produce definitions of individual words has utterly failed to measure your actual ability in this area.)

But that end number does not express the very profound difference between someone who scores evenly poorly for each function the test measures and someone who scores exceptionally badly on some parts and exceptionally well on others.

My own experience with being a 'gifted' person is that some students who got the IQ scores would be mediocre in some areas and incredibly talented in others, a phenomenon that consistantly disturbed those 'gifted' people who scored more evenly. Even performers would get out-wizarded. You'd probably out-wizard a pretty good segment of the over-130 crowd, and in the areas a lot of them most value, which would scare the hell out of them.