NTs and intelligence

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At my voluntary job this morning I overheard a conversation this morning between 4 NTs, they were talking about grades, and what grades their kids were getting at school (and I'm not going to go assuming all of their kids are Aspies). One said, ''my daughter did really bad in english, but got an A in maths, she's always been good at maths'', and then another one said, ''my daughter's hopeless at maths, but does well in english. Her favourite class is science, she really enjoys physics.'' Then the other one said, ''my sons are better at creative subjects like art, music and drama, but are bad in more comprehensive subjects like english, maths and science, although one of them is good at reading, he was one of the first in his class to read at a young age.'' Then the first one said, ''my youngest son does really well in sports and even does a football club after school with his mates. He may be good at all that but he doesn't do so well in the other subjects.'' Then one of them said, ''well, all children are different, I suppose. They're always going to be good at one thing but not so well in another.''

So a class of NT kids doesn't mean ''all these kids will all get a C-average in every exam'' or, ''more A's mean they're Autistic, all G's mean they've got learning difficulties''. So what is the difference between intellectual development in Autistic kids, typically developing kids, and kids with learning delays? Does this mean that all NT kids are different; good at some things, bad in other things, average in a few, but can still all learn at the same pace, where as gifted kids find the normal pace is too slow and ones with LD-like conditions find the normal pace too hard?

ps - I was classed as a kid with learning delays, not a gifted Autistic kid. The classes were never too easy for me.

I think your conclusion is balanced.

Though, remember that there can be mixes. For example, I'm gifted and have always found classes too slow and under my level, but I have slow processing (which is understood as a learning disorder) which means that while the class is too easy the easy material has to be processed slowly. So, I can make the top grade in the class, but still struggle with making it faster than anyone else,if that makes sense.

Those smart people that can think at the speed of lightning scare me, however, I don't find them as accurate as the smart, slower, methodical ones.

I don't know. I guess there'll always be a mix. Some NT kids are good at loads of stuff (I can name several, and half of them are personality free people I would rather not know), some aren't great at anything taught at school, and others will be in the middle.

People will always be affected by different stuff though. For example, a dyslexic left alone may never get further than writing out the alphabet, whereas a dyslexic whose condition is caught early could grow up to be a writer. A lot of it is nurture rather than nature, I think, for example with these two made-up dyslexics.

When it comes to classroom stuff, I don't think there's that much difference between NTs and Aspies, except maybe Aspies are often more intense in their learning, in the sense that they will drink a subject dry and then crave more from it. I reckon that's why so many people on the spectrum end up doing experimental or push-the-boundary type jobs, like experimental physics for scientifically minded Aspies, or writing and painting for creatively minded Aspies.

I think intelligence and autism are two different things. Some autistic people are highly intelligent and some are not. Some neurotypical people are intelligent and some are not. I think the distinction is how you use the information you learn. NT's usually seem to be less determined learners and are more likely to only care about grades, but when you get someone on the spectrum on an interesting subject, they will know enough to teach the class by midterm. I've read that high intelligence and a touch of autism is the secret to genius. I'm sure it's not the only one, but I certainly think it could be.

I agree with LordExiron, but I will add that intelligence is not a number that can be applied to any matter. Some people (NT or AS) may be very intelligent for some things and not for others. What differences ASD is that in general we have more difficulty with things not defined explicitely.

The main point of this thread is that it seems everybody is better at one thing than at others. There are shades of grey with NTs and learning - not every NT will get a C-average in maths, science and english. When I was 15 and 16 (my last year at school), we were all put into maths sets, and I was in the lowest set (which was ''set 4''), and the other kids in this set had learning difficulties and struggled at maths, so we were all learning at the same pace (which was slower and a bit different than the rest of the maths classes), but I didn't feel I needed to be taught differently. I just struggled at it like the other kids in the lower set did. Most of the other girls in my class were in the higher maths sets, some were even in set 1. I could not think how hard set 1 must have been.

The point in having sets at High School was so that all the kids could have the chance to learn at the pace suitable for them, rather than sticking them all into one class when some need to learn at a quicker pace than others. So doesn't this go to show that not all NTs have the same needs for learning?

I practically struggled in every lesson through school. The only thing I didn't struggle with was when we did creative work, like writing a story about anything we wanted. Actually, the teacher always told me to put more description into my stories, rather than making them sound mundane.

The examination system and the education system in general are flawed because they fail to take into account diversity in effective learning methods. Especially when you're dealing with autistic kids and other neurological issues.

To give you an example I remember at school I couldnt understand a word my maths teacher was saying. This was around 15 years ago, at home we had european TV on satellite and I started watching a maths show in German about simultaneous equations as there was very little stimulating english language shows in that field(FYI i didnt at the time speak a syllable of german) but because the guy was using computer graphics and visual aids I understood the lesson better than my regular teacher at school despite the language barrier.