Gifted people are similar to autistics?

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I got my IQ test results today and has I've noticed something: Why are the characteristics of gifted people so similar to those of autistics?

check it out http://giftedkids.about.com/od/gifted10 ... traits.htm

Interesting no?

And I read another article a awhile back that said gifted kids are misdiagnosed as autistic on occasion.

Because the gifted spend so much time at their gift, they tend to develop habits by choice that are similar to habits of Autistics, who develop them out of reduced ability to do otherwise. That's my guess. Poor social skills can come from hardwired lack of ability (Autism), or from simply not socializing much (gifted). It's not quite that simple though. A lot of gifted people are very social. Actors, for example, are generally more social, but gifted.

Depends on what kind of gifted you mean too. Super high IQ gifted or just very talented at something?

The real difference is in whether the behavior is caused by a neurological problem, or a combination of high intelligence, talent, or whatever. The cause is the difference.

Then again, there is a reason the Mensa site has all kinds of links to other sites dealing with psychological and neurological disorders.

Sometimes it can be a chicken/egg discussion, but not always.

To be clear, I mean high IQ, not giftedness in a splinter area.

I don't see how they are similar.

Most Asperger people I know are gifted but they also still have small issues with change, understanding humor, pedantic speech, motor clumsiness, stereotypy, etc.

I still don't know if my autistic traits are actually due to autism, or just ADHD+giftedness.

People who are "gifted" are assumed to be act different. So it can be hard to differentiate between someone being gifted and having aspergers from that.

(why my mom didn't think of that I could have aspergers until very recently)

Maybe you can look at it like this: gifted people have a lot of brainpower, so they can afford to spend a lot of brainpower on a particular topic.

An autistic person might not have much brainpower, but they can also spend a lot of brainpower on a particular topic, since they are not able to spend it elsewhere (social skills, etc.)

Yes, lot of people on the spectrum are gifted, it can be hard to distinguish in childhood.

Gifted NTs will develop more emotional and social intelligence. Some seem close to being autistic, but most still have a more balanced set of abilities than autistics(emotionally and socially, anyway).

Gifted and genius people on the spectrum are as intellectually gifted as NTs who are geniuses, but they still have a disability, you can't get around it and many people on the spectrum have a hard time "proving" they have a disability.

It's just a similarity in the structure of the brain. Yes, gifted NTs are more like people who have ASD but they still have advantages that autistics are limited with or completely lacking.

I don't get why people are saying they aren't similar, if you are an Aspie who isn't gifted you still have a brain that is similar in structure to that of a genius and many of the same traits, just a limited set of abilities.

I want to add that the vast majority of people with genius IQs still do have an uneven set of abilities.

It's not as clear with NTs, but they usually have average or slightly above average IQ across the board and then SUPER smarts in one area.

So really, genius NTs are more like autistics than autistics are like gifted NTs, they just have something that autistics don't have but they usually aren't as "normal" as other NTs. The more you see what a spectrum all of mankind is, the less important it seems to make all these comparisons.

You do see VERY NT, well rounded gifted and genius people but it's rare, I got obsessed with MBTI for awhile and the majority of geniuses were INTJ/INTP which is also the dominating Aspie type.

When I was in high school (1980s), my neice's therapist told my sister that one of the attributes of "giftedness" was an inability to identify and cope with emotions. She used to drive me crazy telling me to use "feeling words" to describe how I was doing -- "fine" wasn't good enough. I had to come up with something like happy, sad, irritable, etc. It was annoying as all blazes, but it did seem to help. I don't really remember thinking in terms of feelings very much before then. Even so, I sometimes have to stop and think about how I feel when I get cranky and start acting out towards people. Once I identify the feeling that's troubling me, I can address the cause. Sometimes it's an emotion, sometimes it's something physical like a headache or joint pain that I wasn't fully processing until I stopped to identify it.

You must remember that not all people with AS have unusually high IQ.
I personally don't know or care what my IQ score is.

Gifted NTs are usually better at socializing than aspies.
They don't have sensory issues or obsessive interests.