Overlap in autism and giftedness (diagnosis often confusing)

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For starters I will shortly introduce myself as I have just made an account and have never posted here before, I am a 28yo guy from the Netherlands, who has been diagnosed with a form of high functioning autism at the age of 27(my psychiatrist was not sure about the diagnosis so they left the specifics blank).

The question I have is if there is more people out there who cannot match certain parts of their personality with high functioning autism, which are however explained in the realm of giftedness, but have remained undiscovered for most people close to them until they found a way to fully allow their brain to function.

This may sound a bit strange but ever since I have been living on my own my ability to think deeply on subjects such as autism and the way my brain works has become more and more unlocked so to speak, I describe this as if my mind would be a library but during my years as a child/teenager most sections of the library were locked by the librarian because there were too many people around so to speak ( social events to deal with).

Ever since I have less social events to deal with ( currently unemployed so mostly at home alone which is another long story), it seems more and more sections of the library have become accessible, and the level at which my brain functions grows steadily, as well as my ability to comprehend social cues and the ability to actually describe emotions on a detailed level ( for example fear, anger, happiness and how your brain interacts with such events)

Another thing is that I always have had several talents and not just one, but after a while I feel I have become good enough at it and move on to the next challenge, rather than being stuck with one preoccupation for a extended period of time, however most are in the realm of creative thinking ( drawing, model cars, cooking, creating music from scratch digitally, computer games at a competitive level etc.).

Around the age of 12 I was able to fully complete a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle in 1-1.5 hours, and during a vacation I almost completed all jigsaw puzzles of that size we had in the house, but I have not made a jigsaw puzzle for at least 6 years and the one I made then was years after the one before it, as if I completed that chapter in my life.

When I look at the typical diagnosis for high functioning autism I cannot place this very well, and it sometimes does confuse me and has me ponder a lot , My personal coach who visits me twice a week is somewhat convinced that I am gifted IQ wise, which makes me wonder if my autism somehow has masked this part of myself due to social stress for years, and only occasionally presented itself in event such as the jigsaw puzzles, but now that I have finally found a peaceful place and peaceful life this part of me starts developing at an increased speed, as if it would be "catching up" on lost years somehow.

The way I think is also something I cannot match with the ways people with autism tend to think which is off course never exact as autism presents itself differently in people, I think visually in a 3d first person video style, I can travel anywhere in my head at any given moment, and think of objects in that way, but I also think vocally (both in my own language and in English), I think in smells, taste and touch ( the way an object feels), so If I think about an apple, I do not think about the picture of an apple that I know, but I can bite into the apple, and even mimic the allergic reaction it gives me in my mind, If I think about a peanut butter sandwich, I can smell the peanut butter, and feel how the structure would feel when putting it on bread.

I hope there's people who can relate to these things, because I sometimes have my doubts about my autism diagnosis, and I have no one to share it with outside my family ( my mother has hfa and has pretty much the same way of thinking as I have, but does have difficulty with describing topics such as fear for instance).

Sorry for the wall of text, and sorry if parts of it seem as if I would be boasting, because that is absolutely not my intention.

I relate a lot to apple eggsample.

I also eggsperience each sensory modality when I think of something, anything, eberrything.

Jigsaws were also big obsession of mine when I was nine, moar moar moar pieces pleeeeeeez.

I am also visual-spatial thinker, and location and orientation of objects in space are verry merry berry important to me.

Language is not my strength, but I am OK at verbalizing as adult, but not as good as intellectual peers, autistic and neurotypical.

Giftedness and autism are interesting compound in me too, but I don't understand physical and chemical properties yet.

For me, the overlap was between autism and bipolar spectrum, with possible schizophrenic traits as I'm discovering later in life.

I think these traits you have mentioned are common to a lot of people. It is often described as an active imagination. A lot of people in the arts, especially, think this way. Not sure if it is considered gifted.



One sign of having less stress in your life is more hobbies. That is not a condition in either the positive or negative senses. That is called being human.

Here's an instrument psychologists use in differentiating the two in children--maybe it will give you some insight.
http://mcgt.net/wp-content/uploads/2011 ... cklist.pdf

Thank you for that list as it very helpful and far more detailed than the information I have come across so far on the subject.

Judging from the list I would say at least 90% of the gifted list does apply to me whereas the Asperger's list hardly has any subjects that I can truly relate myself to, but the ones I can relate to are things that still give me some trouble in my personal life.

I do have natural empathy and understand and feel the emotion of other people around me, however I notice sometimes that emotion of others especially people who I cannot relate tends to bore me and does not give me the appropriate mirrored response my neurons should give me, I am fully aware of this when it happens and it feels as if something is missing (this has never really happened in a real social situation but I notice it mainly while watching drama series).

Another thing I have never been able to pinpoint when it comes to autism is that I very much enjoy sarcasm as humor, and also am able understand sarcastic jokes and sarcasm in general in a language that is not my own.

Last edited by Jonov on 23 Jul 2013, 10:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I tested as gifted (IQ 135) and always did well in school. I was recently diagnosed with AS/ASD. The two are by no means mutually exclusive.

I've been tested near the gifted range however I find it difficult to asses sometimes where one ends and the other begins.

Mostly I wonder if certain autistic traits within the realm of social functionality may have been so overwhelming to me, that they have overshadowed and in a way blocked my ability to fully use the benefits of the gifted traits I posses until recent.

My parents were told by psychiatrists when I was a child than I'm not gifted, but "talented".
I am talented in some restricted areas, but I'm not gifted, because, I was told, gifted people are supposed to be able to apply their mind to everything or almost, while talented people have talent only in some restricted areas.
There's a guy in my class who I think is gifted.
He can apply his mind and focus on everything, can solve very complex problems and is a straight-A student.
He also is good at sports and social interactions, and often takes the role of the "leader" in a group.

I, despite being talented, am an avarage student and struggle when I have to study; I can reach above-avarage results only in the subjects I am interested in and can't solve geometry problems.
I am good at algebra equations, some types of science I consider interesting, and at confronting languages that have similarities, but I'm not at all like that guy.

That is quite an interesting theory and I can relate to the fact that it took me very long to get myself to study but if I did I could get great results, most of the time I chose to settle for a 7/10 by not studying at all and using the information on the subject that stuck with me from classes.

Since I have been bullied from age 8 till about age 18 or at least until I left high school, this makes it sometimes hard to determine whether I liked team sports in the sense of sports because I never felt I've been given a fair chance to participate in them, also my focus in class was constantly interrupted by bully's causing me to lose vital information and practice, leaving me pretty much on my own to figure things out.

The social interactions and leader role is something I have been thinking about quite a bit, and I've discovered that in for instance team play games that I play I am quite often the shot caller but more in a advisory sense, rather than being the guy who also leads the team when the plans we made have to be executed( I have done that occasionally but it is very exhausting), I wonder where that fits in the leader hierarchy, because its neither leading nor being submissive and a follower.

I've always been able to anything that I put my mind to, especially intellectual pursuits (I have dyspraxia so my physical coordination is not good enough for sports for example)

It was always been a personal motto of mine that you can do anything you like if you apply yourself to it. And it's always worked for me, I really did have the ability to learn anything I applied myself to. When I played Zelda for the first time on the Nintendo, my initial reaction was 'hey, I'd love to create something like this!' A year later I'd taught myself enough about computers to start making my own zelda type games from scratch!

Like you I often pursue a subject till I know all there is for me to know (or be interested in) then get bored and move onto something else that Is new and exciting to learn. Its like my mind never stops being hungry for new knowledge and needs constant intellectual stimulation.

I know exactly what you mean about thinking in 3d too, I do that all the time. apparently 3d spatial thinking is something people with Aspergers are often very good at (but not all with AS have this ability) I also think in colours, smells and taste, and if I imagine my favourite Pizza from Venice, I can feel the texture in my mind along with the smell and taste of each ingredient

Of course as I grew older I realised from observation that most people can't actually do anything they like if they tried. Which surprised me a lot! I don't know if this intelligent adaptability was a result of my Aspergers or not, I suspect it may well have been facilitated by it at the same time as being held back by it.

One big aspect of ASD is that the brain filters that NT's have to block out unnecessary sound / visual information, do not work properly (if at all) in us. This is why we hear and see so much more than NT's - to the point of it being so overloaded that we can shut down.

My ASD consultant told me about an experiment where NT's were asked to do a drawing from a photograph. Then strong magnets were attached to their heads which blocked the part of the brain which filtered visual information. With those magnets in place the subjects were able to do the same drawings with far more accuracy and detail, much more than they thought themselves capable of! This is why people with Aspergers can often draw and paint in so much more detail (again not all ASD sufferers can do this)

My Theory is that the same filters also block or slow down the ability of the human mind to think as clearly as it could. If it can affect artistic ability so much, why not other cognitive and intellectual abilities?

The downside - as you mentioned is that that same lack of filtering also makes being able to concentrate a lot harder if there is too much distraction

I hope this makes some kind of sense, I get easily overloaded when writing so tend to keep things briefer than maybe i should

I can very much relate to the information craving you describe, I often find myself browsing on information on topics that suddenly catch my attention, because somebody mentioned it or because it was a topic in a tv show, what I think most people do not do is that I actively try to understand these things at such a detailed level, the autistic aspect to it is that I sometimes feel compelled to find that information and cannot rest until I have done so.

It doesn't really take me much effort to imagine things like how the builders of certain ancient structures would have used the materials available at that time to build them, I often find myself reinventing things by visualizing them and teaching myself how they would have been built or inventing new things while I'm taking a shower, because only being worried the soap not getting in my eyes seems a bit boring, meanwhile I also go trough the normal stuff such as what my day will be like and what I am going to talk about if I am going to meet someone ( and how they will respond and then how I will respond and the 100 options where that conversation could lead ... ok maybe not so normal)

A lot of people will say that "everyone does that" every now and then or is able to do this, but I feel the giftedness lies more in the awareness of these abilities and cravings for such thoughts and the willingness to keep exploring new area's of interest.

My personal coach has often explained to me that in fact not everyone does this or is able to do this the way I am able to do it, but since especially in my country the norm is to be as "normal" as possible and going outside that norm is seen as trying to hard, it is logical people would simply tell you that your abilities are nothing special to put you back in line, however if everyone indeed thinks exactly like this I am fully willing to accept that, in fact to me it feels odd that people would not think like this, because I have no idea what else they would be thinking about instead, and how they would occupy their minds.

Another thing I do which can often be confused with manipulation and caused me to be wrongfully diagnosed as narcissistic, is that I can play a form of social chess and think many steps ahead of the people I talk to, and am if needed able to adjust their opinion by steering them into the "right" direction, however I do not like to do this as I feel it is not very nice but sometimes it feels necessary.

It's surprising just how little thinking many people do - that's why they vegetate in front of the TV most of the time. The Human race is capable of amazing things, but 99% of the time they just settle for mindless mediocrity.

I often wish I could have lived during the renaissance, alongside Leonardo, Michelangelo and Galileo etc. People who despite no computers, calculators and internet, were capable of huge leaps of thinking

I do agree it would be fascinating to see these people working in their prime and to learn how they think, I often think that the current IQ analysis does not take certain forms of intelligence into account enough, especially when it comes to the ones that allow people to comprehend psychological topics such as understanding ones mind, when I took my test a lot of questions were based on general knowledge of figures and events in history, but if you'd go back in time and performed an IQ test on the people you named, using the current methods they may not have seemed as brilliant as they actually were, as less documented information was available in education.

If only we had time machines though, I would love to go for a walk in a renaissance era city, at least we always have assassins creed

Its funny you'd mention the vegetated state in front of the tv, I often have to force myself to do that just to be able to sleep, making sure my mind is in a lower gear before bed.

I never thought of using TV to actually slow my mind down - probably because even watching TV the other half of my mind is still working on my latest invention or something.

I went to Padua last year, and visited the university where Galileo actually used to teach, they still have the podium where he lectured from there! It is also home to the oldest dissection theatre in the world. It was am amazing visit purely because I was walking in the footsteps of the renaissance. I'd like my next visit to Italy to be to Florence, the original Heart of the Renaissance.

Thank you for the link, it was interesting,

I wonder, wouldn't many people present a mixture of Gifted and AS traits? In my particular case, it's like this:

Memory and Attention: 2 points Gifted / 3 points AS (normally, 2 or 3 topics of interest; poor memory for names, faces and figures; dislike memorization tasks; problems returning to work once distracted);
Speech and Language: mostly Gifted (except for problems with give-and-take in conversation, and communicating distress verbally);
Social and Emotional: all AS (except for 1 point: Keenly aware that he/she is different from peers. BTW I've seen many AS people here on WP write about this, I thought it was typical);
Behavioral: 2/2 (resisting to change offered by other people; questioning rules imposed by other people; developing my own routines instead; stubborn yet not really independent, need someone to organize my life when there's a lot of stress; aware of problems and distressed by them; + lots of stimming);
Motor Skills: all AS.

I can relate to this except that in my case the process is going in the opposite direction.

I had IQ=147 when I was 17; now when I'm 37 i't between 100 and 128 (test results vary depending on my condition).
It's not that I give much weight to IQ as a tool to measure intelligence; but the figures are symptomatic.
At school and university, I was brilliant. Sounds like I'm boasting, but in fact, here's nothing to be proud of because actually I haven't developed any of my talents.
What happened after I graduated was kind of socialization. I've been socially engaged for many years now (family, work, etc.) I've been wasting myself on something I'll never be really good at, and I feel that it's consuming 99% of my energy, and (using your methaphor) more and more sections of the library are closed. I'm terrified by how much I've forgotten and unlearned.
I wonder how far this degradation can go; I wonder if there's a way to stop it.