Are aspies smarter?

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I've heard this stereotype for ages and I wonder, is it true? If so to what extent?

And why? Is it because we spend less brain power on NT functions so there's more left over for cognition? Is because we obsess over things and there's a chance our obsessions will be in fields associated with high intelligence?

And how common is it? I have a bunch of aspie friends in real life and only some of them are smart. A lot of them seem to have average intelligence and a couple of them even seem to be a little below average. So is this just an urban legend or does it have a basis in fact?

I've never been any smarter than everyone else. In fact I was always put on the special ed table all through primary school, and was in the lower classes at secondary school. And I've never felt any smarter than the other kids either. In fact it always seemed that they were smarter than me. I am average at some things, like spelling and writing and stuff like that, but everything else I am below average. I'm not putting myself down - I really am underaverage at a lot of things. I hate people calling me clever. I have a creative mind, and I often think of things I would like to create but don't have the brains to even know where to begin. I would like to make a ''big bang'', and form a little Earth, like in my living-room, but I don't know what equipment to get to make that happen. I mean if it happened in space 14 billion years ago then why can't us humans make a very miniature Earth here on Earth? That would be so cool...

Does it matter if you're a certifiable genius if the work you produce is mediocre and you can't articulate well enough for others to believe it?

The short answer- it depends on the person.

In my experience, I have an insanely detailed memory. I hate it when people call me "bright" or what-have-you, because I feel like they only really see my memory in the works. To me, intelligence requires more than regurgitation; and for a long while, I felt like a circus seal on a ball that others observed.

I felt this way until an NT friend of mine pointed out, "The fact that you think intelligence is more than fact-memory shows you're intelligent."

I don't feel like a prodigy or anything, but I do have some odd knacks in the classes I'm taking. (I'm a math major, a junior; and there's a class with a professor that no one else understands but the material clicks efficiently enough for me that it doesn't matter. I've also noticed some connections between my classes, since I'm taking 12 hours of math.)

We're especially blessed if our special interest is an academic subject or a trade; but I've never felt like I picked mine. My "hyperfoci" all chose me.

Calstar's right, though. We can't throw communication skills out the window.

I think some people say it because they have heard about some autistic geniuses that stand out. They are probably not aware that there are many average ones, too.

I believe the trait of focusing intensely on a small number of things tends to make some autistic people very knowledgeable in certain fields. So I think your second statement is pretty much what I want to say, too. An autistic person may tend to be more of a specialist with some weaknesses rather than a generalist who is ok in everything but not particularly outstanding in anything.

I don't know how common it is. You have to look at some statistics for that if there are any.

To define "smart," we need some kind of objective measure, so I sought out Asperger WAIS IQ scores. I found the following:

http://books.google.com/books?id=vMR9b7 ... is&f=false

The average Aspie IQ listed is 97.5. Aspies score higher than normal on verbal comprehension (104.5) and lower than normal on processing speed (88.4). Indeed, IQ tests are commonly given as part of the Asperger diagnostic process because Aspies usually show some kind of disparity in at least two of the subscores - usually the two I just mentioned.

I took the WAIS test last night as part of my diagnostic process. My shrink says I have ASD, but she said my processing was a little faster than a typical ASD result, so perhaps 90-something. I don't have my full results yet, but she did tell me that much.

I don't think that it is necessarily true. Some will be but others won't. They may also be better at somethings, that others aren't.

IQ tests don't measure intelligence.

There are certainly things IQ doesn't measure. If we aren't going to use that, though, then we need to use something else, and define intelligence accordingly.

I don't know why intelligence has to be a competition.

Can't people just be happy being good at what they're good at?

I happen to think that IQ tests are BS too.

Intelligence is really hard to measure. I bet there are extremely intelligent people who were born in sh***y families in poor places who never learned to read or write yet have tremendous capacity for learning. I bet there are hugely creative people who, as a kid, were told they were "stupid" because they were dyslexic, or left-handed. That there are shy people with more social grace then the loudest braggart. That there are drunks in the gutter with voices of gold. That their are lonely people, all alone, with stories to tell but no one to tell them to. And then there are some whiny, spoiled kids who once aced an IQ test and brag to everybody how they are a "genius" and somehow better then everyone else.

What is your basis for comparison??

Are Aspies smarter than...

...dogs?

...rocks?

...philodendrons?

...normal people?

Then you run into questions of how to define intelligence.

Academic intelligence? Fluid (problem solving) or fixed (memorized data)? Cultural knowledge?

"Common sense"? Whose common sense?? What is common sense in Eureka Springs, AR isn't going to be common sense in War, WV. Neither of those things is necessarily going to be common sense in Buffalo, NY. There will be a whole other kind of common sense in Beverly Hills, CA. And another whole different one in East Los Angeles. Another one in London, and another one in Mogadishu, and another one in Abu Dhabi, and another one in Kolkata, and another one in Beijing.

Technical intelligence??

Emotional intelligence??

Social intelligence??

Everybody is smarter than someone else, and also less smart than someone else.

Everybody is smarter than someone else at one thing, and less smart than the same person at something else.

"Smarter than" is a fools' game.

Every bit as much about trying to draw general conclusions like that about a demographic of millions of people.

Everyone is firing at me for posting the IQ link, but no one has told me what intelligence actually is.

It's stuff like this - constantly, stuff like this - that makes me want to retreat even more than I already do socially, gives me even less confidence than I already have, makes me doubt further my capabilities, and makes me hate life further. Whatever I do, it usually gets shot down, and I rarely get any alternative answers when I ask for something else to explain.

I don't know what I'm intelligent at. I tried to give something according to the poster's question. I don't know what else to use. But by golly, it sure made a lot of you mad.

I think I'm pretty stupid, actually. I'm cleverer at manual things, but how do you measure that?