Having a high IQ while being a bit dim??? anyone

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OK, so this may sound a bit strange, since having an IQ in the gifted+ range supposedly implies that one is pretty intelligent. I have an IQ in the 130s, and yet if I look at how I handle situations or how I attempt to solve problems, I don't see that number represented at all.

An example is: I currently work at a warehouse, where I'm pretty happy. My work at the shipping department where I'm employed, consists of loading boxes of sportswear into truck trailers. When I go about working, I am sometimes reminded by co-workers that I should do it differently, so that I can be a bit more efficient. For example, I had to stack boxes on wooden pallets, but I had to stack them neatly and nicely so that they wouldn't fall off when they were moved. They fit on the pallets as 5 rows of 4 boxes. So I was just fitting them on the pallet by making them align with the pallet's edge when a co-worker reminded me that it's far more efficient to use the center of the pallet (the axis) to stack the boxes from.

Similar stuff happens to me all the time. At the warehouse, all the tasks are actually quite simple, yet I don't appear to see the connections 'between the dots', as it were. I really should have figured the thing with the pallets out simply by looking at it and thinking about it, then there was another thing with labels that needed to be on the outside which I also messed up, etc. etc. I don't understand how my IQ can be measured at 132 if I can't see these basic patterns.

Does anyone else either recognize this, or have an explanation as to how I can score so well on IQ tests, yet fail at these basic practical things?

I should also mention that I do not have any great talents in science or other intellectual pursuits, even though I enjoy reading. I don't seem to properly store information, let alone find an application for it.

Maybe it isn't a failure to see basic patterns but rather is executive function problems. There's this study.....
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 7798001590
...... which discovered that

Maybe you have executive function problems which are apparently unrelated to IQ. I have some problems with executive function too. It leads to inefficiencies which look silly in hindsight- something that should have been obvious. That's the value of neurodiversity. Different people spot different things.

The standard IQ test is based off the Bell Curve. It is comparing you with the rest of the population. It is possible to have areas you are higher then the rest of the population and areas you are lower in. One can still have a high IQ if one area is lower and the remainder are higher then the average. Example: A blind person can not see but the other senses are heightened and are better then the norm.

I'm 90% in Creativity but only 20% in Communication. The brain has compensated for the abnormal area.

When you go about doing your various tasks what do you think about?

Is one of the things you think about, how to do the job you're now doing in the best, most efficient manner?
This is what you should consider doing.

This would make you a valuable employee.

If you spend your time at work thinking about how nice it would be to be somewhere else (etc.) you would
not be able to be the best employee you could be. This was me: The Daydreamer.

Later I started to improve and eventually (after 22 1/2 years) retired with benefits and praise (they hoped I
would stay longer).

Focus your mind beyond what your hands are doing; perhaps before or after the actual task. It's hard and
takes hard work and much self-discipline, but you'll be successful

I agree with ZenDen. I've had the problem of thinking about other things rather than focusing on the task at hand.

I also tend to skip over the simpler tasks that are more fundamental, and going straight to the challenging problems.

I tend to do things in unorthodox ways, and luckily that kind of creativity is needed for my work, but I could do some things "the way you're supposed to" and save time, materials and energy.

I am the same way. I think it's largely due to the environment I'm in and how much physical movement and interaction with people is involved. If I sit down to take a test in a quiet room, I can block out awareness of my body and the world around me and just be in my head to think.

But if I'm up moving around in a more noisy or crowded environment, it takes up a lot of mental energy to process that. Especially if I have to interact with people while I'm doing something, that takes up a huge amount of processing power. I have to think about my physical movements, think about the sounds I'm hearing, etc. Strategies and problem solving become a lower priority and I have less energy to accomplish those tasks.

To further complicate things, my working memory is terrible. So if I have to remember things while I'm doing something, it really slows down my processing speed. It can be something as simple as "put box A in bin X" but I have to keep reminding myself of it. If someone starts talking to me while I'm carrying around box A, it might end up god knows where.

Have not read the entire thread because I just got home from my slave job so I'm tired. But I have a similar situation. I appear to be quite intelligent in some ways, yet below average in some other ways. I've only taken an intelligence test once. It didn't say it measured IQ but after I had taken the test I found out that it was very similar to IQ-tests. I think the test was supposed to have been taken with a time limit, yet I was allowed to take as long as I wanted. She said that she preferred to have the test taken that way. I also made notes on papers which I didn't ask if I was allowed to do... Anyway I scored well above average but I took quite a long time.

It seems like I'm slow, and that is something I have had a lot of problems with. It's weird that I was very good at math at one time yet I have had a lot of problems with studies. Now I have a crap job. But I don't have any desire to obtain an education. Although I do like to learn in my spare time. But I'm not interested in any career. But I do hate my job so I don't know. I'm 30 now. Only time will tell.

As for the intelligence. I really don't know where I'm at on the map. As I said, it seems like I might have quite high intelligence in some ways, yet quite low in some other ways. It's confusing.

Sometimes I have wondered if there actually is such a thing as being "too intelligent" for society. By that I mean that maybe your "machine intelligence" peaks at a certain point and if you're more intelligent than that you actually become less "valuable" to society, less efficient. You are not the kind of person that is very fast and efficient, rather you are someone who is more of a philosophical absent-minded sensitive neurotic loner type, too intelligent for your own good. Maybe I am that. Or maybe I am not, at all. I don't know. I am quite sure however that my "emotional intelligence" is very low. But I am not sure that's a bad thing, it might be a good thing actually. And I'm also not sure "emotional intelligence" is intelligence at all. It might just be connectedness or even just conformity and gullibility. Political correctness if you will. I have been thinking about that. It seems quite clearly to me to be the case that whether someone else is intelligent or not is not something that is totally obvious how or if it can be measured. For example, someone might do something that we find evil or sick. Then we might wonder if it's intelligent or really stupid. However I think that ethics is a separate issue to a degree. Yet I see how one person's or society's frame of reference totally affects how it perceives a specific person. "There's a fine line between madness and creativity." That's something I think should be kept in mind. IQ-tests and even just any form of measurement or judgement is really subjective when you think about it. It's just that if 99% thinks it qualifies as objective, then it's said to be that.

I am also fascinated by so-called left brain and right brain intelligence. One person that interests me in relation to this is Robert Sapolsky.

He seems to be very intelligent. Yet I get a feeling I might have higher intelligence than him in certain aspects of intelligence. But I might be totally wrong. His intelligence seems to be focused on the left brain.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WwAQqWUkpI[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEnklxGAmak[/youtube]

I have also wondered what the connection is between spirituality and intelligence. It appears to me that there are certain kinds of intelligence that are spiritual. I find it very interesting that Adolf Hitler supposedly didn't like IQ-tests because he thought that they measured "a Jewish kind of intelligence". A thing that interests me is that supposedly there has been tests showing a negative correlation between intelligence and religiosity. If someone points to such studies, one might counter with "My studies show that people who believe in the validity of statistics are less intelligent than those who doubt the validity of it.". Or with Francis Bacon's statement: "A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion."

Found this online:



I recently found a rare diagnosis called Mendelssohn's syndrome that I might qualify for.



source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizotypal_autism

But a lot of times I feel quite stupid...

Anyway, I don't really care about it. And besides, intelligence might be an aspect of the ego and something that you should not attach to if you want to progress spiritually, which I do.

Hope you have a good life OP. bye

That would be me!

Yeah, sounds a lot like me too. Above average IQ but seem to find difficulty in some of the simplest tasks because I can't keep my mind on it or just don't see the connections. I found that what was best for me was a job that doesn't change, that is low pressure and I can do pretty much alone. So, I work as a janitor in an office building and just follow the schedule of work that I set for myself. Granted, it's not a glamorous or challenging occupation but it works for me.

@tomato

I can relate to most of your experience, except I have a fairly decent job (thanks to my struggles and a handful of luck).

I have already suggested a connection between mild schizoid or sczizotypal traits and autistic behavior at this forum, but it didn't have much effect. Yet I think that in some ways there's always a possibility of falling not only on the autism spectrum but other spectrums too at the same time. Connections between autism and other psychotic/mental conditions like schizophrenia spectrum, bipolar, depression, or even antisocial disorder etc. might be more real than most people in our age might dare to think, especially on or near the spectrum, due to some special and delicate kind of social blindness (or bias, if you will).

A possible explanation could be the way how "autism" was formed and later widened as a category. Even "Asperger's" had been significantly diluted over the decades (see "autism epidemic"). A significant part of the patients that formerly may have been diagnosed with some kind of mental condition that fall under a label belonging to personality disorders are now elegantly placed under the terms "HFA" and "AS". I think there's nothing wrong with this, except that some people may be missing a key to proper treatment, resulting in suboptimal quality of life.

I wonder how many on this forum (or rather, what proportion) can identify with your issues, regarding slowness, above average IQ, low EQ, being more a philosophical loner type, etc. As for me, I do really struggle with slowness, absent-mindedness, lack of ability to "connect the dots", seeing the big picture (whatever it means), generally being difficult at placing myself in other people's shoes. On the other hand, I have clear advantages over more average thinkers, by which I don't mean any insult or contempt. It's just, I think people really should do things in a complementary way, but - ironically - autistic people often lack the ability to communicate their needs, and listen to what others need.

Having a high IQ while being a bit dim??? anyone

Aspies may have neurological sensing and processing difference that achieve depth at the expense of breadth. The result may produce a higher performance on things like IQ tests while at the same time contributing to being less able to respond to a breadth of environmental stimuli.

If we give a lot of thought to one thing, we can look smart. If that focus keeps us from responding to other things, we can look dumb. What we are is different.

I've done about half a dozen IQ tests over the last 10 years, and my IQ is between 98 and 130, depending on when I did them. I don't think IQ tests are very useful.

i have a high verbal IQ and an average performance IQ due to learning disabilities. i think think shows in the real world.

I wonder if being slow can be a thing that's similar in it's origins to how someone can be sensitive in various ways. For example sensitive to sound. If you are sensitive to sound you might have a highly developed sense of hearing, either the hearing in itself or the mental faculties connected to it. And thus might enjoy fine music and not disco music. Someone who is totally into disco music on the other hand might hear fine music and reject it out of inability to appreciate it, because of an undeveloped sense. Similar to how bad wine might taste good for someone who has an undeveloped sense for wine tasting, while the same wine might taste awful to someone with a highly developed sense for wine tasting.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMfdCryHYj8[/youtube]

Maybe slowness, at least sometimes, is a similar thing. That sometimes the reason someone is slow is because they are sensitive, have a highly developed sense. The mind is full of all kinds of things that simply aren't there in others, and when they aren't there you might be a lot more efficient at certain tasks, but lacking substance in other fields. Maybe sometimes when someone is slow it's because they are like when a person who is used to fine music all of a sudden hears some blasting crude bass tones of disco music. It offends their senses. Not because they're dull, but because they're the opposite of dull, sensitive.

I think intelligence is not some simple thing that can always be measured on a scale. It's a complex multidimensional subject. I feel that my slowness has been a spiritual blessing as well. It has kept me away from a lot of stuff I might have gone into otherwise, and that has forced me to put my attention at things I might have neglected otherwise. I think that "inhibitions" of various sorts often serve this kind of purpose. When we are suffering unbearably we probably are not doing what we're meant to do. Which is why I think taking antidepressants might be a sign of stupidity. Being well-adjusted and popular is another sign of stupidity in my book.

It doesn't matter either way though. Sensitive or insensitive, slow or efficient, who cares...

OP I work in a warehouse too trust me I feel your pain.

I'm the opposite of you. People think I'm smart, but I don't do well at IQ tests.