Giftedness versus Asperger's

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I have been identified as a gifted child ever since elementary school, but I'm wondering if I may have Asperger's as well. I fit practically every symptom of it - difficulty with social interaction, obsessive interests, having routines that must be followed, very sensitive perception, and intense focus on subjects. However, I know that being gifted is also similar. What differentiates the two conditions, and does anyone else have a similar experience?

Autism spectrum is diagnostically defined by your negative symptoms. So yes, the difficulties with social interaction/emotional reciprocity, strict adherence to routine and resistance to change routine even if the routine itself is actually making your life harder for you, narrow field of interest etc.

Giftedness, in the way in which I believe it is being used in your case, is all about positive. You learn more quickly in particular areas than is expected for the average person of your age range.

While there is a correlation between savantism/giftedness and autism spectrum, it is not a diagnostic part of the spectrum, nor is it a commonly occurring correlation.

So, in your case, you were identified as a gifted child. That has no bearing one way or the other about whether you may have an autism spectrum disorder.

Does that answer your question?

That's not nearly all there is to giftedness. If you want to know more, look into the idea of overexcitabilities.


However, to the original question. Asperger's is on the autism spectrum. We're autistic. We have a disorder. We aren't just quirky and eccentric. How does it interfere with your life?

(I was called just gifted when young, did well in school, identified when I was 13, diagnosed at 22, not managing at all currently, and working with a counselor, occupational therapist, vocational rehab worker, and life coach currently to try to maybe be a functional adult)

It seems that a lot of parents do not want a child that is "wrong" and therefore chooses to focus only on the good sides, but not the negative ones. They prefer a "gifted" child instead of an autistic child! To bad if this do not help the child function in this world (outside the parents nest).

Supposedly giftedness also exists as a singular "condition" without autism, you yourself are the best person to decide.

<--- Wishes he was gifted and not as dumb as a box of rocks.

Every day is a war. Living through it is the gift. Thriving is a miracle.

Giftedness just means you are above average intelligence by a certain margin. Aspergers, on the other hand, involves a set of symptoms that closely matches the ones you listed above, which have almost nothing to do with giftedness.

how many times have you been identified as "gifted" since elementary school?

from what i know, there are 3 types of prodigy.

1. there is the "gifted" child. someone who is"gifted" has a greater propensity to be dynamic in the application of their mental investigations which are fully robust, but prone to dilution due to the wide area that the scope of their curiosities covers.

2. there are "talented" children. someone who is "talented" has a specialty of thoughts, and they apply their minds to their investigations of narrow fields of reality that attract their interests. i was considered to be talented.

3.savants. they know what they know with no fathomable reason. it is not known by me how some savants can report what they calculate.

The difference is that giftedness is a positive thing, while Asperger's is mostly negative. And I don't think I've had similar experiences, because I don't think I'm gifted. I am good in science, I can draw in a good way, but it's nothing special; a lot of other people who haven't got AS are good at science and can draw decently. And however, I don't think my abilities are related to my AS.

i meant "calculate what they report"

It has been said that one of the ways that one can differentiate between gifted children and children with Aspergers, is that if you put a group of gifted children together in a room, they will interact pretty much like typical children do - they understand each other, and can interact quite well; they just don't do well with their more typical "peers." If you put a group of children who have Aspergers together, they will still look atypical - they will either not interact, or will interact in odd ways: the conversations (if any) will not be truly responsive, they'll be more like side-by-side soliloquies.

No it's doesn't. Most giftedness and asperger's traits overlap including sensitivity, hyper-focus and strict adherence to routine. Gifted people can have social issues because they are on a different level than their peers [edit: the test Jat mentions is applicable here] . This can lead to social awkwardness and isolation and thus the appearance of asperger's*. Autistic people have social issues because they just don't "get it" - reading body language, social cues, talking in turn etc. This a bit of a simplification, but it's the most common idea.

Many professionals have a hard time distinguishing people that are so close to being one or the other. Some say it can be co-morbid, some say it can't. Because there is no DSM criteria for giftedness, it's hard to tell. Take a look an article such as this, particularly the case study, and you will probably be left scratching your head:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/5464232/Autistic-or-just-brilliant/

Part of it is also a parental bias towards gifted=good, asperger's=bad. I'm in a similar position, blue1skies. I was 'diagnosed' as gifted as a child. As I grew older I had more and more social problems. Were those caused by disinterest and not learning those skills as a child or teen? Or is it a fundamental difference? I don't know as of yet. I am building social skills and scripts to use, but they do not come naturally and are slow for me to learn. Is this a part of the learning process? Are people predictable because we learn these scripts as children? Are people so used to it they don't know it? These are the things I think about...

I think it's more important to focus on the strengths and issues you have rather than grouping them all and sticking a label on it.

*If it appears to be asperger's is it not asperger's? Does it appear to be giftedness as a child which is then revealed as truly asperger's as ones social development is halted? Is giftedness next to asperger's on the spectrum?

Well sorry I got that wrong. I tend to get confused with these things...

Your explanation makes a lot more sense than mine

I've never been gifted, I've always hovered around the ''average intellegent'' mark. So people can't say that I am gifted.

I think a lot of this giftedness business basically amounts to people grasping at straws to find the good in a bad situation. Personally I believe that any successes I've had in my life are in spite of my Asperger's not because of it. While it is true that I would generally be rated a competent employee by my supervisors, hold steady employment, have an excellent relationship with my girlfriend and our son, manage resources well enough to get by, and do alright in social situations, I would put my intelligence at maybe the higher end of average and fully realize that my past academic performance left something to be desired. What I'm trying to get at is that Asperger's is hardly a gift, I'm no longer as angry as I once was at being diagnosed, but given the choice I would still opt out of having it.

Indeed there are similitudes of Asperger's syndrome and giftedness, they are not mutually exclusive and scientific research has suggested a moderate correlation between ASD’s, giftedness and prodigiousness; nevertheless, there are potential disparities that will help disambiguate anything uncertain in association with these diagnostic entities. It will also substantiate how deceptive the frequent misconceptions (e.g. the media's stereotype) really are. They often imply that all aspies are intellectually superior or academically successful or that they exhibit prodigious capabilities in an artistic or creative area of discipline.

Resemblances of AS and intellectually gifted children

• Both AS and gifted children show a fascination with numerical digits or letters and may indulge memorizing intricate and factual information at some point during early childhood.
• Both have a propensity to show an excessively absorbed interest in a specialized topic and acquire cumulated amounts of informative data, facts and figures associated with it.
• Miscellaneous aspects of AS and giftedness that correspond with both entities include sufficient articulation, verbal eloquence, exceptional memory capacities (e.g. eidetic recall), hypersensitivity to sensory stimuli, and a total lack of interaction with other peers.

Distinguishable characteristics that deviate normally gifted children from gifted children with Asperger’s syndrome

• Speech patterns are normal in non-autistic gifted children, but it tends to be assertive and matches someone beyond the child’s chronological age. Gifted AS children are linguistically pedantic and coherent.
• Gifted/AS children show a strict adherence to routine, therefore they are unlikely to tolerate any unanticipated changes and may be susceptible to respond with aggressive outbursts or agitation. Normally gifted children may resist in a passive manner, but are likely to go along with it.
• Normally gifted children are able to engage social reciprocal humour, thus capable of peer interaction despite their proclivities to being aloof, awkward and seclusive; whereas gifted AS children don’t typically grasp the concept of humour due to a lack of reciprocity development, this marked deficit partially contributes to their social ineptness.
• Most gifted children without AS acquire adequate motor skills, whereas a huge proportion of gifted/AS children exhibits the manifesting signs of physical clumsiness.
• Attention disturbance is generally externalised if present in normally gifted children. In gifted/AS children, it is predominantly internal.
• Impairment in nonverbal communication (e.g. difficulty interpreting body language or grasping the conception of social rules or conventions) is not defined as an intrinsic characteristic of normally gifted children.

__________________
Diagnosed with "Classical" Asperger's syndrome in 1998.
AQ: 47/50

Last edited by TheRedPedant93 on 12 Nov 2012, 12:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.