PDD-NOS/AS vs. Giftedness?

Post Reply New Topic

We've gotta be careful as well there - ie. we don't want to extend Aspergers or ASD out further than its core mechanisms to lasso in everyone that has difficulty relating to other people.

Dendelion: the trouble is, you can tell the difference between spart aspies and very high functioning NT's. To see a very high fuctioning NT from the outside and not know a thing about them you wouldn't think anything too odd, most likely they'd seem like they're as stylish and should be just as socially capable as the next. The difference is, their intelligence in and of itself gives a different perspective on problem solving that has them behaving differently from peers, different is that much of a problem on its own that these people can fall into severe depression or try to talk to people and feel like everyone's turning a cold shoulder or deliberately ignoring them - like they're crazy.

That's why I said that there needs to be some objective measure of Aspiness. There are some promising results involving fMRI and mirror neurons, but they aren't ready to be used for diagnostic purposes.

Having talked with and observed gifted aspies and gifted NT's, I would say there are clear differences. I don't get along well with the gifted NTs - even if they are not preppy judgmental snobs, they are always at a level socially that I can't keep up with and have no desire to try to keep up with - but the gifted aspies are great.

I wonder to what degree it's possible for giftedness and AS to mask each other. I have always been very intelligent but a terrible test taker. It can take me hours to finish a test that isn't very long at all. This meant low standardized test scores for me throughout schooling, even though I was reading and writing at an unusually high level. I've also found that I can learn a great deal from private study, but if I have to sit in a classroom full of people and listen to a teacher talk for hours, eventually my brain shuts down from sensory and cognitive overload, which is a serious disadvantage. In spite of my difficulties with the standard school environment, I managed to get through school with high grades. I wonder how much better I would have done without the added challenges. I also wonder how dysfunctional I would have appeared if my intelligence were more average ... probably dysfunctional enough to get a diagnosis at a young age.

Even now, I am doing very well academically, but otherwise my life is a mess and I am totally dysfunctional. I mask my lack of functioning with my intelligence and academic success.

I agree, I think the range is much more variable. The research by Hollingworth was started in 1924, and to my knowledge, no one has looked into it further.

Also, the peaks and valleys lead to an "averaged" score in most instances anyway. If you have 3 percentile short-term memory, and 99 percentile long term-memory, that averages out to "normal" which doesn't seem at all correct. One Dr. suggests that the peaks should be counted, with the valleys considered "learning disabilities." That would lead to a more accurate score. That said, again, I don't think the actual IQ score is that important as your own personal experiences and ability or inability to function in an NT world.

I can relate to this! I had to go through the college disabilities office to get tested in a private room. It helped a lot.

I've done very well academically too, but can't seem to function well at all.

"Intense World Syndrome" isn't technically a syndrome. It's a theory of autism. Basically it says that some autistic people are actually hypersensitive to sensory input, emotional input, social input, and so on. This is consistent with my experience. This in turn causes autistic symptoms. Someone, for example, with very high empathy in early childhood might lower their empathy levels because the emotions that they pick up from other people affect them so strongly. Or they may be prone to anxiety or phobias. Or they might have other mood problems such as bipolar disorder. It's not been scientifically proven, so it's not a real disorder, just an educated guess.

Exactly this.

Ok, yes, I'd completely agree. Its the thing about not having enough barrier over your senses to keep some amount of distance from them. I remember even as a kid that people could easily get into my head and puppet my emotions as well, let alone that I had real high sensitivity to sunlight, music, everything. To this day if you have a film that shows a really long focused shot of someone siling elatedly its extremely uncomfortable for me to watch.

Or that one is "intelligent."

My problem with discussions like these is that there is no concrete, objective measure of what constitutes "intelligence." Generally, people will just define "intelligence," or "giftedness," in whatever way they feel is most flattering to themselves. Granted, there's usually a correlation between IQ and people who are bright enough to design rocket ships, but I'd be more interested in the statistics of high IQ people who accomplish absolutely nothing. And no, I don't consider doing "good" in school to be of much value in of itself. In the end, it's about what traits any given society values. I'm not good at math, and the U.S. defines "mathy" people as "smarter" than "arty" people; therefore, I am not "intelligent."

As for who I get along with, I tend to relate best to those individuals who are down-to-earth, practical, and with a good sense of humor. Sometimes, these qualities are present in people I consider "intelligent" according to my own definition; othertimes, these qualities are present in "dumb" people. I'm not going to disregard a potential friend based on an arbitrary smart/dumb dichotomy.

Besides, I've noticed that with many of the people I've encountered who go around describing themselves as "highly intelligent," it's nearly impossible to have an actual "intelligent" discussion with them. They tend to have an emotional attachment to the idea of themselves as "highly intelligent," and any disagreement with their opinions on any subject is viewed as an attack on thier "intelligence." I find I'm not addressing their intellects; I'm addressng their egos. Additionally, I've noted that the Dunning-Kruger effect is often at play, and I tend to run into problems when I am not as sufficiently impressed by their "giftedness" as they feel I should be.

In conclusion, I cannot say that I get along with "intelligent people," only that I get along with people who possess the qualities I described previously, and who may or may not be "intelligent" according to my own personal standards.

I haven't been diagnosed with aspergers, but I took an IQ test years ago, because I was so unhappy with not knowing any other people who were like myself, so I know I am unusually good at pattern recognition.

I don't know definitely that I have aspergers, but I don't think being gifted would explain the difficulties I have. I'm hypersensitive to my environment and easily distracted and overwhelmed. I'm clumsy. I can't separate sounds, and have difficulty understanding verbal instructions. I can't structure my activities, and have dropped out of or done poorly in many classes where the subject was not difficult in itself for me.

Change and the unexpected is difficult for me to deal with, and I need a lot of time to work up to and to decompress from being social.

I know other academically gifted people who are social, and they don't report any of these problems.

I do function much, much better socially with my intellectual peers, but that's because they're better at understanding me, and they don't react with fear or aggression when I display my intelligence. Often they're very interested in substantive conversation, and the ratio of small talk and exchange of ideas is comfortable for me.

I think my pattern recognition abilities mask my aspergers a lot of the time. I've learned to read facial expressions, and I've learned rules of social interaction. I work hard at observing social interactions completely and accurately, and go over them in my head again and again, and compare with situations on TV and in books. I also listen when other people talk about social situations they've been in, because gossip about people who aren't there is the best way to get someone's evaluation of behavior and attitude and intentions.

When I talk to friends, they often tell me I "overthink" things, or react with disgust or discomfort if I mention that I do this, so I've learned that that is not normal, and that that is not how others process social interaction. I used to have a good friend who suffered from social anxiety and was delayed in her social development because of her difficult childhood, and she was the only NT who was willing to analyze behavior in the same way I was.

Sociologists are also interested in analysis, and you can learn a lot from popular sociology documentaries. However, most of what they say is inaccurate, because they can't distance themselves enough from the situations they study, and they skew their results to fit political agendas.

Anyway, I think I use a different area of my brain to understand social interaction. It's all brain work to me, and it's as tiring as studying grammar or math problems. It has never been something subconscious or intuitive.

The more experienced I become, the quicker I am at it, and the better I pass. Many familiar types of interaction I no longer have to analyze, I have the correct responses memorized and don't consciously think about them.

Maybe dr. Amend would think that that means I don't have aspergers.

Exactly. If I am at a party or at a bar where the IQ is average I have to really be careful of what I say and be cautious not to get too analytical in conversations. Sometimes it can just come out.


And that's very depressing, almost like "If you really care to figure it out - its a sign that you were forced to realize something was wrong with you" and, I have to wonder quite often if that sort of thinking out lymbic system puts out because - as the whole point of ostracizing those who are different is eugenic/genetic at its core (unthinkingly IMO), clever fakes or people who fake normal aren't liked much.


Yeah, that's also quite disgusting. I feel like I'm willing to look at a lot of things in human nature that other people won't, and its really to no credit of my own - my life has forced me to.


Asperger's is already a syndrome - ie. a buckshot of symptoms. If people get any more impressionistic about it or start saying that it can come and go at any point in a person's life or it disappears upon entering adulthood - it almost becomes a worthless term. Its funny how dentists can get it right, dermatologists can get it right, general practitioners can usually get it right, while neurology is still filled with all kinds of elixers, snake oils, and witchcraft by today's standards.

LOL, yeah. There are definitely people who make me feel like a freak, and send out those "unclean, unclean!" vibes. Not in a calculated way of displaying social dominance, but as a visceral reaction they can't control. But it's not everyone, and we do breed



Yep.



Haha

Neurology isn't so bad. Psychology is horrible. The way that I see it, the things that we understand about the brain and the mind are neurology. The things that we don't understand are psychology.

A way of thinking about giftedness is to understand the spectrum, their are two types of brain on the spectrum, autistic brain at one extreme and normal brain at the other.

autistic brain -------------------------------------------------------------------------------normal brain
in between are the pervasive development disorders
they are aspergers, pdd,nos high functioning autism etc.

autistic brains like routine, sameness, being focused on repeating behaviours etc

normal brains i understand, like chaos, if your on the spectrum you will have more autistic traits than normal traits, inparticular asperger individuals have brains structured like autistic brains, but are less effected by austic disability. to be gifted you must have a narrow set of traits, such as very focused, divergent intelligence not convergent like NT's and so on. in other words you must be autistic to be gifted, it is almost impossible for NT's to be gifted. Both Einstien and Mozart were thought to be aspies.

A good book that deals with giftedness is 'The world of the autistic child' by Bryna Siegal.

___________________________________

High functioning neurotypicals, another kind of human?

I define giftedness as "I was tested in the first grade and classified as gifted." Since I have a lot of mixed feelings (and bitterness) about this and its impact on my school life and lack of support, it's not really about ego.

And I agree it is about traits that society values, although it's even spotty on that.

What bothers me about the whole thing is the assumption that being gifted or a genius means being able to overcome cognitive disabilities with wit and intellect. I do think that to some extent, it is easier to develop coping strategies, but at the same time coping strategies can only compensate for so much. Plus, one's intellect might not be ideally suited toward compensating for particular cognitive disabilities or combinations thereof.



Yeah, I get along with people I can talk to about my favorite things. I don't really care how intelligent they may or may not be.

You can be intelligent without necessary accomplish something. Gifted is somethings that some peoples simply are, either or not they succesfull.


Some NTs are indeed gifted. That there is some commons traits between autism and giftedness don't mean they're the same thing.


I guess gifteds are likelly to have a better theory of mind, even though they can have difficulty to relate to "normal" peoples from being weirds.


Very true.


I was said be "gifted and lazy" by some professional as a kid. A more recent test don't seeem of the opinion that I'm gifted though. (I can confirm the "lazy" part at least )
Online I get along well with the gifteds of Gifted Haven, but I can't say for real life.

Last edited by Tollorin on 06 Feb 2011, 12:08 am, edited 1 time in total.