Aspergers and being extra smart question

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Hey

I'm yet to be confirmed as an Aspie but in my mind, I feel like one .. except I don't feel all that smart. I failed school and didn't do the final year [Australian schooling] so I didn't learn at school to my utmost best.

I was pretty much ignored and slipped through the cracks, so I'm not smart but I'm smart in other ways when my mind isn't foggy. I spot things before everyone else. Lost your sunnies, just ask me .. I will know where they are.

So my question .. do Aspies HAVE to be extra smart?

I'm in the process of being tested etc and I'm going to be sad if I'm not as the quest to find out what is wrong with me starts again I want to know so I can learn to be different, instead of having meltdowns because I can't deal with everyone around me.

No. That's the quick answer. And - perhaps some of us can use some of the surplus brainpower that's not doing the 93% of communication that's non-verbal for other things.

If we're really, really, lucky, we might be in a social network that lets some of the results of that surplus brainpower's application be useful.

For the other 99.9998% of us, though, we're not noticeably smarter than the rest of them.

People with Asperger Syndrome generally have average to high average intelligence.

However, just because you did not do well in school does not mean you are not above average, it just means you did not do well in school.

People with AS typically have a different learning style than most people.

Thanks for the replies.

People with AS typically have a different learning style than most people.

I'm frustrated today because I so badly want to converse with someone but everyone around me are NT and they get bored with what I have to say so I just end up talking to myself or my many pets

Might go chat to my rabbit ..

i will try to provide my opinion on this question.

my psychiatrist said i had "asperger syndrome" a long time before "asperger syndrome" was officially recognized in the DSM.

at that time, there was an idea among psychiatrists that there could be such a thing as "autism that was nullified by elevated native intelligence".

my psychiatrist told me when i was a child, that autistic people (general autism) were usually mildly to moderately ret*d relative to the general population.

she told me that people with autism had a layer of cognitive disarray that they must "reason" their way through because they were not naturally born with the automatic decoding ability for those areas of preconscious understanding that the general population takes for granted.

she told me that if a person of average intelligence from the general population was suddenly thrust into autism, that they would have an extra burden of deciphering what is automatically understood instinctively by the general population.

this burden would cause them to fall behind significantly from other members of the general population, and the externally observable result would be seen as retardation.

autism is not related to intelligence in any way.
there are different levels of autistic severity, and there are different levels of intelligence.

the level of autism combined with the level of native intelligence is the combination that produces the level of functioning of an autistic person.

at the time i was being initially evaluated, there was the term "gifted autistic", and that was a parallel to the current term "asperger syndrome".

what it meant was that an average person afflicted with a moderate level of autism would be moderately ret*d due to the extra burden of reasoning placed on their average intelligence due to the fact that their innate understanding of the world around them is impaired.

but people born with a gifted mind who are also moderately autistic, can work their way to a level of normalcy due to their extra reasoning ability and therefore not be seen as ret*d.

there are many types of asperger syndrome (non ret*d autistics). at one end of the spectrum is someone who is extremely affected by autism (almost no "god given" (innate) understanding) who is a native genius who climbs their way up to average or greater than average functioning through exceptional reasoning ability.

at the other end of asperger syndrome, someone may be only very mildly autistic, and only very mildly above average intelligence, and achieve an equilibrium.

that is of course the case for autistics of average perceived intelligence

there may be cases of people with mild autism and extreme native intelligence who are prodigies because their intelligence completely surpasses their level of autism

there are others cases where almost profound autistic people who have extreme genius level intelligence can climb only to a point well below average societal intelligence, but far aloft from where they would be if they had average intelligence (these may be savants whose blindingly bright intelligence shines through a few cracks in the walls of their profoundly autistic prisons).

I didn't do well in school and I still got diagnosed. My cleverness came after I was diagnosed.
People with AS don't have to have high intelligence though a lot of them are smart cookies.
I suppose I have some co-morbid issues and don't even rightfully have AS so my brain can't retain as much information as most people with AS.

This is me (hopefully this doesn't sound egotistic). I have many times been told how I am 'crazy smart' and have felt that that there is a huge disparity between what I think on the inside and what I am able to communicate to the outside. Thus I find myself underemployed, or in positions that are maddeningly boring, to the point where it is a major source of agitation and depression. I find myself wondering if the autistic part of me is actually quite profound and my compensatory mechanisms have been sufficient to allow a veneer of normalcy. Too bad there is no objective measure for the degree of autism. It would satisfy an important question in my mind (which craves the satisfaction of such questions).

you quoted 2 paragraphs of mine which were distinctly different. you can not be both,




your worry that it might sound egotistical is indicative of your innate intelligence which would indicate that your level of autism is mild.




"crazy smart" is a phrase i have never heard and yet you have heard that phrase many times?


i do not know why, but i always seem to find my way to positions that interest me and that other people value my place in. sorry to hear about your saga.





you may care to quantify yourself in terms of how "autistic" you are, and therefore how "smart" you are in order for you to appear as "normal", but i never give a moments thought to that type of quandary as far as i am concerned.

i do not care whether i am smart or stupid, i do not care if i am severely autistic or not (although i am severely autistic i do not care). i just care as to whether i am allowed to live through my day without any obstacles. i am fine on my own and i do not need to be seen by other people as smart or dumb because their opinions do not affect me.

i am happy enough with my routine and i have few cares and i do not agonize over how i am seen.

i have enough brain power to get me to where i can twist the worlds pockets to give me money which i will allocate to my retirement as soon as possible.

you are young and i am old.
your life is telling
and mine is told.

Last edited by b9 on 15 Dec 2010, 8:03 am, edited 3 times in total.

I think my brain is just focused on some things, and im awesome at those things. And then there are alot of other stuff that im id say im mentally disabled in.


on average, im average. But somewhere im crazy smart.

Thanks b9.

Makes sense

1) You arent necessarily lacking in smarts.

2) Aspies arent necessarily above average in smartness. But you cant be (what used to called) "ret*d"either.

Normal IQ hovers around 100.
You can score as low as 70 and be classified as AS.

So an aspie can be anything from 70 (slightly subpar) to a genius.
Einstien might have been an aspie, but you dont have to be an einstein to be an aspie.
Further- I suspect that you have more upstairs than you think you have.
All the more reason to get yourself tested.

Like someone said "aspies have different learning styles".
I did poorl to mediocre in school but made it into Mensa ( the high IQ society).
So your lack of academic success doesnt necessarily mean your not smart.
And theres different kinds of smart ( ie different apptitudes). Many valuable skills and apptitudes are not academic.

Im kinda the opposite of you. I can visualize maps of the world and then mentally superimpose the ancient world on top of the modern world and then tick off all of the modern countries in Europe, Asia, and North Africa, that once belonged to the Roman Empire. But I CANT find my sunglasses.

You should get tested. You may have aspergers, or you may have ADHD, or you may be an NT with some descrete learning diability that you can focus on overcoming.
And you may have skills you dodnt know you have- like mechanical abilities- or whatever.

i suspect a big problem for a lot of aspies is that they are never taught how to use their smarts effectively, and so their talents atrophy. Compulsory education in a mainstream classroom doesn't exactly nurture a love of learning--not for me, anyway. Schools aim for the middle of the bell curve and typically fail even at meeting their needs. The outliers are on their own most of the time, and get more training in sit-down-and-shut-up skills than critical thinking.

The good thing about thinking is that you can get better at it with practice. There is a lot of information out there about cognitive bias, metacognition, effective learning strategies, etc. Philosophy is excellent for mental calisthenics. Meditation is even better.

Also, because the people around you likely have a different set of smarts, they may not appreciate or even notice your kind. It is probably when I feel I have said something especially insightful or profound that the people around me become convinced there is nothing in my skull at all.

There was once class at high school that I aced .. science class.

Most of the time we were given a sheet of questions to answer and worked at our own pace, got to read books and answer and learn in our own way. I loved that class.

The teacher only really stood and taught when we were doing hands on.

I'm really awesome when it comes to perfection and using my hands, I'm a trained picture framer and photographer If it isn't perfect [in my eyes] then it isn't right.

I'm in the process of being tested, just need a referral.

indigo-oak... just by asking the question you make yourself smarter.

I would prefer not to have given so much energy to this fundamental quandary of my existence. It is driven by an enduring frustration in the disparities between my internal self and the way its expression has been supremely frustrated in my external existence.

This forum is deceptive. It allows me to function in the medium that most effectively bridges the gap between my mind and the world - the written word. In real life, I am no where near so effusive. My oddities are tolerated by others, but not understood, and they regularly prevent any substantive integration with society.

Thank you sooooo much for weighing in on this. My Dr dx me a few weeks ago and I have been struggling with the sterotype issues since that time. I am very strongly employed and have very much always been "succesful" in this world. That said, I am socially fairly ret*d and people tease me that it takes 101 times for me to learn anything. Just yesterday my Dr informed me that my IQ was far higher than I thought it was due to my processing of information. According to him, this is the thing that allows me to have all the things I have and to be who I am despite the disorder. I am processing all of this now and your post really helps me to comprehend it all a bit more...