Aspergers and above average IQ

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I got 150 there , it seems that you are smarter than me

I hope that you and Mechanicalgirl39 are quoting scores from scale that Mensa uses.

That would put you both just inside the 98th percentile.

If this is the scale that Americans seem to use, which sets 130 at the 98th percentile, this would put you at about the 99.9th percentile

Either way, you both score higher than me with only 149

Hi,

I was wondering if any studies exist that show that Asperger's patients are more likely to be of the INTP personality type. As you can read from the description of the INTP type by simply googling it, many of the features of the INTP personality type coincide with symptoms one might find in an Asperger's patient.

I quoted from the test linked. I don't know wich scale it use . With Raven's progressive matrices (what Mensa use in italy) I use to score between 160 and 170 usually.

Lets turn this around.

It looks to me like a huge proportion of people who have noticeably high IQs have social skills that put them somewhere on an Asperger's-type spectrum.

I've had a career in high-performance consumer electronics, dealing with engineer-run companies, and with the engineers at larger ones. Although I don't have Aspergers, I tend to think analytically. Since I can also think as a marketing person, I have served as a bridge between the engineers say and what "regular people" can relate to. I write "translations" from White Papers into product brochures.

My mother was a computer programmer. Totally geeky stuff, complete with radiation badge at one job and Top Secret security clearances. Her friends tended to be very bright, and radiate the kind of pretty darn strange that seems to go with. I've always associated bright people with -- what to call it? Geek-syndrom? Mensa manners? I've always recognized this package of traits that went with being highly intelligent, but up until I started reading about Asperger's I never had an official term for it.

It was, you know, just the way engineers ARE. I used to take a certain pride in being able to spot a computer programmer or engineer at 10 feet just by looking. (Harder now, as Tshirts are pretty universal so they blend in better than in the days of rumpled permanent press shirts with misaligned buttons.)

And its not like I feel anything but respect for the brilliant people I recognized by their inverse fashion-sense. I get really excited by highly intelligent conversation. It's a chore to talk with "normals."

I joined Mensa to meet bright people, and I've participated in a lot of events in different areas over a number of years. They way Mensans socialize is distinctly different from a more normal group. Maybe even notoriously so. On the one hand, these are at least people who are sociable enough to go to parties; on the other, no one gets thrown out of the group for behaving strangely, so its the only group some of them are allowed to belong to. (Sometimes it just the tiniest little things that tip you off, like one guy who kept a plastic fork tucked in his shirt pocket throughout a party. I'm sure it makes sense from a practical standpoint, but some people seem to get distracted by it.)

So all of this gives me a very strong association between high intellect, particularly in the math/sciences/engineering/code-writing type sectors and what looks like Aspergers.

So I guess I kind of assume the opposite association to be true: if you have asperger's you must be terribly bright.

I also have a feeling that a lot of mental effort goes into compensating for Aspergian "blind spots." So those with a lot of the kind of intelligence to do so will use those analytical tools socially, to fit in as well as they can (and to what extent they're willing to).

My best friend told me years ago that he does things very consciously that he KNOWs other people don't have to think about to do. When he was in elementary school he called himself "the mechanical man". He hated being touched. Until I discovered WP, I thought he was in a category all his own. Now I know better.

He used his intellectual powers to do computer programming and hardware tasks, earning pretty impressive salaries in the process. He also depends on his intellect for socializing effectively, to his satisfaction.

If you believe, like I do, that the mind responds to use rather the way muscles do, then the fact that Aspeis are working so hard -- all the time -- to analyze everything, just to keep their balance in the world of everyday interactions, then I think we can expect that Aspies are developing awareness and insights, developing all analytical and observing capabilities, become actually brighter over time because of it.

WOW!

Thanks for sharing this.

I am a member of Mensa (at the low end of their spectrum) and I was talking with a restaurant owner in London, many years ago, who was also a member of Mensa.

He described a Mensa dinner party that was hosted at his restaurant where a left handed Mensan took great offence at the fact that his knife and fork had been set out for a right handed person! (and I thought I had problems)

You are spot on with your comments on compensating for 'blind spots'.

I have only just discovered my AS and I am still trying to bring my life experiences into focus. One thing that is glaringly clear is the fact that I have had to use my intellect to compensate for social impairment and it is EXHAUSTING.

I think the best way to describe it is that it is like cycling up a mountain, on high gradient roads, in a high gear. It can be done if you are strong enough but it is exhausting and in the meantime, people who are less strong are cycling up, with far less effort, in a lower gear!

I hope you'll join us again and act as a bridge between the 'normal' world and us.

I found your words very encouraging and I have to stop now otherwise I will go into lecture and you won't read this

Happy Halloween.

Highly intelligent peoples can have problems at socialising, but it don't make them asperger per see. It comes from different problems. (like overexcitabilities and intellectual interests) Also it's not true that asperger is the "geeky" syndrome. Not all aspies are interessed in informatic, mathematics, sciences and geeky stuffs. And not all aspergers are smarts either.

Yeah, pretty much.

You know, I'm wondering whether we mightn't be chasing away some of the people who'd only got average on their IQ tests. It's hard enough to be Asperger's without having it implied by IQ elitists that somehow you're inferior Asperger's.

Either that, or the psychologists are diagnosing PDD-NOS and classic autism in the average-and-below cases.

I'm tired of this "Aspies are smart" stereotype. Might seem like it boosts your self-esteem, but trust me, in the long run it won't do a thing to help us. Destroys unity totally, for one thing. I've met Aspies who thought you weren't worth much if your IQ wasn't at least 90.

I like this post.

I am someone who 'scores' at the 98th percentile in IQ tests and from your profile as an engineering student, it is quite proabable that you are someone who 'scores' well over 100.

I am also Autistic; my particular kind of Autism is called Asperger's Syndrome.

I didn't choose this and neither did an Autistic person with an IQ or 90, neither did a person with Classical Autism and neither do the Autistic Savants.

We are all Autistic and that IS the unity. There is also incredible diversity amongst us and I think that diversity should be celebrated.

Apart from the occassional IQ thread I have no idea of the IQ of people posting on WP and frankly I don't really give a sh*t.

I am more interested in how to be less of a social cripple, which crudely is how Autism affects me.

One of my best (only) friends is someone who considers himself to be 'not very smart' and that is putting it very lightly.

He doesn't know his 'times tables' and he is a self made multi millionaire and still relatively young.

Guess how 'smart' I feel when I am with him

Autism exists on a spectrum, which itself embraces a cognitive intellegence spectrum.

It is what it is.

Ok, that's the end of my Unity Address.

Think with me: Asperger's is a lot of "shades of gray" on a scale, as is intelligence; it is functionally not something you "have" except for diagnostic purposes, any more than you do or don't have intelligence. If you accept that for working purposes, what we have is a couple of gradients, and an interesting question can arise: do they have any tendency to track together, or are they simply independent from one another?

If Asperger's does not correlate with IQ, then the only reason people with IQs measured at 70 and below don't "have" it is by fiat. They "officially" have something else. Same as people who are recognizably on the Asperger's spectrum don't "have it" (or enough of it) if they don't fit into the official diagnosis by being detectably "impaired."

If Aspergets and hi IQ do tend to go together, that would make sense to me based on my observations -- BUT -- I must admit that the only people I've been really personally interested in are the ones who are notably on the brilliant side. (However, even if I have been fooled by my tendency to not associate with people in the more normal IQ ranges, doesn't it remain fascinating that there's this amazingly consistent set of weird behaviors associated with Mensa gatherings? It really bears further thought.)

Going back to a no-correlation model, it would be like the non-relation between, say, your eye color and your weight. Two different traits, no relation. Here's what I think happens. You need a lot of the kind of mental energy you're describing just to compensate, so the more Aspie you are, the more your analytical compensating has to come in to play. Those who can't come up with the resources to cope and get by, tend to fall out of the mainstream. They are less likely to be employed, and probably are not represented here (WP) as much as those who are expending a lot of mental energy doing those analytical, coping things. The ones who able to make more of a success of interacting create their own individual compromises with the world, and their own strategies.

Many of the very brightest fit the cliche of "Dilbert" types, such as my mother and brother. They can be unconventional in a lot of ways and still be paid for their talents and respected by their peers. The sciences are a haven for these people. The less-obvious niches are sometimes self-created ones. My teaching/writing friend carved out his own niches by creating places for himself, doing exactly what he likes to do! This took a lot of natural talent, plus a lot of energy in resisting the forces of "normalcy."

So there seems to be a division between those who struggle -- effectively -- and find or make places for themselves, and those who find themselves overwhelmed, and become relatively invisible.

I do want to offer comfort. That's why I brought up the example of my friend who was the untouchable "mechanical man" as a child, who has learned to compensate so well, by now, that he's never going to be diagnosed with Asperger's.

I was giving you a bit of history, describing observations I made in the past and how I tried to categorize and understand them Note the question marks.

What I, personally did with my observations was to come to conclusions that were logical for me, at the time, as a working hypothesis.

In fact the reason I discovered this site is because I needed to understand someone who is important to me who didn't fit my internal pigeonhole for Asperger's --as I understood it at the time. He doesn't relate well to his computer or to math or engineering. He teaches and writes. He studied philosophy, something my more "classic" Aspie friend thinks of as a waste of time. But he produces some inexplicable social behaviors.

We have known each other for 14 years. I've adapted to socializing on his terms, but I still come in for shocks every now and then. I got hurt enough recently to be motivated to go look up exactly what "passive aggressive" is supposed to mean. I found a discussion where women were telling horror-stories of their relationships with the men in their lives, and one woman commented on another's that "it sounds like he has Asperger's." That got me woken up just enough to begin searching anew, and I found WP.

This has been a revelation for me.

So you can tell me NOW that my perceptions were an internally-created over-simplified category, but NOW is after I've spent a lot of time reading some of the very enlightening conversations here, such as the one where NTs and Aspies ask and answer questions. I love anthropology, and the kind of sci fi that involves alien cultures. well, this is like that for me.

I truly want to understand the other people around me.

I would be interested in finding out what you meant by :



My guess would be things like when I get so fascinated with a subject that I get kind of obsessive about it and consequently run the risk of being boring about it to friends. 

And that the KINDS of things that can interest people who's only problem is being overly bright can be impenetrable to "normals." ( I do recall feeling lonely when I had figured out the difference in information carrying capacity between PCM and SACD digital encoding systems, and couldn't find anyone else to care about it.)

Actually, if you read about Raven's Progressive Matrices, standard IQ tests don't accurately measure the intelligence of autistic individuals. Raven's Progressive Matrices tends to give a more accurate figure. I could easily see an Aspie on a very bad day, stressed out, almost nonverbal scoring a 60 on an official IQ test.

When our mind shuts down, it literally SHUTS DOWN.

I don't believe in IQ's. My father is a physician and I can tell because of his son (me), he thinks that human capability is infinite. There are so many people that wear their IQ's around their neck (to speak figuratively). I have read about famous people: Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and countless other people who found that joining MENSA was like hanging out with douche bags lol. If any of you have heard of Howard Gardner's work titled MI (Multiple Intelligence) he makes very good observations. First of all, he says that IQ tests only test logico-mathematic and linguistic areas of intelligence, and not musical and five other intelligences. His theory that there are 7 intelligences seems to be relevant to this forum because he tested the capabilities of idiot savants as well as people who don't have that logico-mathematic intelligence, but they may have an intelligence in music or spatial intelligence (ability to navigate).
Before people begin to argue with me, I would like to say that a lot of people can pass tests but there are also intelligent people who don't test well or aren't test-takers. People have told me that I am intelligent, but this is usually something I don't really know yet because they probably see me at face value. My strengths are not in mathematics but linguistic and intrapersonal intelligence. I am probably not welcome here since I am probably the most illogical or irrational person on this forum, but my intelligence is in expression.

I can't personaly verify this with the exception that my doctor has stated it to be factual (and my reasearch supports this claim) that we aspies are in the "normal" to hi range. this means that...we aren't "slow" as a pre requesite to having AS you supposedly can't have a below "normal" I.Q. Bare in mind that the AVERAGE is 100-118 but, the NORMAL range is 80-100.

I.Q. is circumstantial at best imo anyway as i'm proof that it doesn't necessarily mean advancement. to really progress we need social complexities that we lack and i'm partial to this as well...it brings bouts of depression and self doubt and yet as a 9th grade drop out i tested at 158 which isn't genius (thank science!) but, "highly gifted". it's done nothing but, cause issue for me though as i have no real outlet to verify this other than my family stating it so or my doctors agreeing. I also cannot do simple algebra or at least retain the knowledge of it's workings. i can learn maths quickly but, anything abstract mathmateicaly i cannot retain and within days of non use i lose and have to start over again. I can lear things in general very rapidly but, again i lose this if i find another interest. I used to be a chemistry wiz and now couldn't tell you much other than getting iron sulfate in your eye can cause you to lose it.

Anyway, research supports (DSMV-IV and i believe V) that in order to have AS you must have social deficits or as i like to call it "social dyslexia" have the inability to INSTINCTIVELY ( we can and DO learn them) read and respond apropriately to social cues (including understanding them at all) and that to rule out OTHER autism spectrum disorders, you MUST have a MINIMUM of "normal" intelligence quotient. normal doesn't mean average and average is what we tend to equate to normal so 80 to me is pretty low on the list but, is still considered normal and not being of inferior intellectual capabilities.

you're correct. I have actualy tested this on myself. at my good point of 158 it drops to about 145 in a crowd and a loud crwd that's rude i'm to the point of barely being able to repeat my name. sit me in a quiet room with electronics,instruments, or about anything else and i can have it assimilated within a few hours depending on what length it is i literally shut down the more frustrated i get so there are many times i barely function.

I got steven hawking beat

on IQ

mobility

and looks

hes written more books than me though lol!!