PDD-NOS/AS vs. Giftedness?

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This is my preferred approach, I get kind of annoyed about how some labels get used, or assumptions made about what they mean. Speaking of which, your points about who has the opportunity to be tested and labeled are good points.

In a very real sense I probably wouldn't even be here* if not for Anbuend's writing. Sure, it took a couple of years, but without her writing there's a good chance I still wouldn't have a firm idea as to what's going on.

Last edited by Verdandi on 10 Feb 2011, 7:10 am, edited 1 time in total.

I didn't read the article, however concerning interactions becoming normal, when I was a child I was always able to converse much easier with adults who actively worked to engage me.

I've also had some rather nice conversations with those on the spectrum in the academic realm, so I do think a part of smooth social dynamics is whether or not the person one is conversing with is on one's "level".

Aside from our concerns about people playing games for ego and oneupsmanship though I think there's still something to people having, per say, a precocious stance or being able to see certain things other people cant and that having a negative effect on their instincts, specifically in how that effects other people's impression of them as that person is acting on parameters that are invisible and unrelatable to most people. Most of the articles, from all over the place, mention that most 'gifted' need intervention to know that they aren't complete freaks because the world pretty much sends the message that if you aren't a lymbic nature first thinker that... well... you're a failed animal and should be in a furnace. If people already don't understand you or why you do x, y, or z, they're also apt to treat you like you're crazy for saying something that goes over their heads - if that happens a lot that can wreak havoc on a person, I'm not just speaking in hypotheticals.

Interesting. First off I'm not gonna use gifted, I have no idea what that range is, I have no idea if I fall in there and the whole thing feels fraught with social peril. I'm just gonna go with smarter than the average bear. It's not a defined range, but at least I could get that pic-a-nic basket if I really wanted it.

Well I have had friends who understood what I was saying. Like I propose a solution to a problem and they pick up on the underlying structure that makes it a better solution than the other options straight away. They don't have to have it explained for 10 minutes before they catch up. I'm used to waiting for people. It's good to have at least one person who can keep up with you in some field, it can get so frustrating if you're always with people who are just a little bit lagged from you. Like when (before anyone thought anything was wrong with me) they always made me sit at the special ed table when I was getting nothing but top grades and feeling bored because they wouldn't let me do more advanced stuff in that year. In the end though I don't need people to be able to keep up to like them to enjoy their input, if they're nice people then y'know, better a nice person I have to wait for than jerk who keeps pace.

This is an interesting thread.

I haven't been officially diagnoses asperger's. I was diagnosed pdd-nos at age 13 more than 15 years ago. I took the WAIS and scored all over the place, ranging from just below average to high gifted depending on the subsection. A few years back I went into the navy recruiters office to see if I could test into becoming a "nuke". I scored into the 97th percentile. One recruiter asked if I was a genius, and the other said that this was by far the fastest time they've seen someone complete the test. I honestly thought it was some sort of prank because the questions were so easy, and then it was over!

Anyways, I've always had difficulties with social interactions, but feel that my intellectual abilities have made up for some of the deficits to some extent. I also seem to have some splinter savant skills that help out as well. When I was a child this most often manifested as the ability to do complex arithmetics at lightning fast speed. I was doing algebra intuitively at age 5 or 6.

These days I'm not so quick in that department. It seems I could retrain my mind to be nearly as fast, but haven't honed the skill/talent in a long time. What I do now is sort of the same, but applied differently. When I do any savant-like processing, there was a sort of integration of various internal stimuli. It's like incredibly fast transforming images, mixed with colors that sprout feelings, and I even hear notes in there as well.

Very hard to describe. I always have at least one beat running, and a mental image being manipulated. When I process subconsciously/intuitively, it's like this just goes haywire and the solution becomes apparent. I seem to have undergone some sort of neuralplasticity to connect this firing pattern to other brain regions so that I may emulate various social/emotional cues. That's the best guess I've got, for whatever it's worth.

This is an interesting thread.

I haven't been officially diagnoses asperger's. I was diagnosed pdd-nos at age 13 more than 15 years ago. I took the WAIS and scored all over the place, ranging from just below average to high gifted depending on the subsection. A few years back I went into the navy recruiters office to see if I could test into becoming a "nuke". I scored into the 97th percentile. One recruiter asked if I was a genius, and the other said that this was by far the fastest time they've seen someone complete the test. I honestly thought it was some sort of prank because the questions were so easy, and then it was over!

Anyways, I've always had difficulties with social interactions, but feel that my intellectual abilities have made up for some of the deficits to some extent. I also seem to have some splinter savant skills that help out as well. When I was a child this most often manifested as the ability to do complex arithmetics at lightning fast speed. I was doing algebra intuitively at age 5 or 6.

These days I'm not so quick in that department. It seems I could retrain my mind to be nearly as fast, but haven't honed the skill/talent in a long time. What I do now is sort of the same, but applied differently. When I do any savant-like processing, there was a sort of integration of various internal stimuli. It's like incredibly fast transforming images, mixed with colors that sprout feelings, and I even hear notes in there as well.

Very hard to describe. I always have at least one beat running, and a mental image being manipulated. When I process subconsciously/intuitively, it's like this just goes haywire and the solution becomes apparent. I seem to have undergone some sort of neuralplasticity to connect this firing pattern to other brain regions so that I may emulate various social/emotional cues. That's the best guess I've got, for whatever it's worth.

You've given me a lot to think about.

I remember for a period of my life I was quite obbsessed with IQ, It might have been my special interest, I learned mine and was pleased but at this point - having grown up a little and gotten wiser, I've decided I just took my IQ test well, nothing more, it wasn't in the gifted range, just a little above average - and that says nothing about me, it doesn't tell people I love the piano or star trek, or that I walk on my toes when indoors but not when outdoors.

I've been mistaken for profoundly gifted and mentally ret*d. On one occasion, both things happened in the same day. I found it amusing...

Seriously, though, I'm good at a few things, horrible at a few things, in-between on a few other things. You can't really predict how good I am at any one thing by just looking at how well I do on the tasks you're given in an IQ test. What I know about myself, IQ aside, is that I'm good at logic, science, and writing; and that's good enough for me.

If you use very complex language, like I do, people will assume you're gifted even if you aren't; or will assume you're more gifted than you actually are. That's frustrating sometimes because that often means they don't believe you when you talk about having a problem. Because obviously, gifted people never have problems of that sort.

Thatthatthat. So much that. Online at least. Offline I have a whole different set of problems.

I'm an adult who was identified as gifted at a young age, and I've very frequently experienced feelings of isolation due to not having anyone similar to me who I can relate to.

I've always been into video games and the like, and my friends would always be the other people who were also into these things. These types of friendships were fun, but they didn't seem quite fulfilling to me. However, it came as somewhat of a wonder to me at times when I actually would meet someone on my same wavelength and feel like, "Wow, this is a true friend I am searching for!" Before I realized what was going on, I thought I was too flawed in some way for a long time, and believed in fate and that God was leading me to the people like me who I could befriend.

No offense intended to anyone who might have religious views, but I am an atheist now and find that belief pretty funny, looking back.

I don't know if I am diagnosable with any 'disorder'; I have suspected ADHD in the past, and I am currently researching Asperger's. From what it seems so far though, I don't have either. I am a bit socially impaired to the point where both my mom and my step-mom have independently told me they thought I had autism after watching TV specials, but I don't have a problem with reading people or knowing what the expected behavior is for a situation.

It's not impossible that you are part of the large group of non-diagnosable people who have autistic traits. You'll see it in engineers and other highly specialized people--no outright autism, but autistic traits, echoes that remind you of autism. Families of autistic people often have traits themselves. After all, autism is genetic, and those genes are floating around in the general population--there are probably a lot of people who have some of the genes, but not enough to outright have autism; there's that in-between region where there's no reason to diagnose because there's no disability, but you can still get people who are pretty close to the spectrum, and may even identify more with autistics than non-autistics, and effectively be culturally autistic themselves. It's not like there's this huge gulf of separation between autistic and typical; it's more of a gradual thing.

And that's exactly where I am. I think I have AS, but it could be that I am just gifted, my symptoms seem to match both extremely accurately. The often overlooked positive effects of AS are much more noticeable in me than the actual diagnostic criteria. It's not so much that I can't have a conversation as it is I would rather be doing other things. But one thing is for sure, even if I do not have AS I can relate a lot more with people that do have it as compared to NT's. And, not too ironically, I am pursuing a career in engineering.

I was doing a study correlating verbal and nonverbal IQ scores and autism test scores and, surprisingly, VIQ and PIQ were correlated at roughly -.18 with DIAGNOSIS_SCORE(Which is a linear combination of AQ test scores and the Aspie / Neurotypical test scores.); this suggests, everything else being equal, those with a higher IQ are likely to score less on autism tests. Of course, does this mean they really tend to be "less autistic" on average or are they just more capable of influencing the test score in a way that makes the score "less autistic" (Since most probably desire not scoring in the "autistic region")? Or is it something else, like they are better able to socially compensate with their intellect and thus they're likelier to be more social and score "less autistically" on the 'social questions' of the AQ and Aspie tests?

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt158261.html

Same here, sort of. I'm not really convinced I have AS, as I'm suspecting my particular deal might be simply giftedness compounded with particular memory deficits, so I might be more accurately described by the "Twice Exceptional" category - intellectually gifted but verbally ret*d (And, by natural extension, socially ret*d).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twice_exceptional

If you CAN have conversations with people that are not about your interests, if you can look at people and if you feel comfortable around people and you are gifted it is likely you are just gifted. I work with mostly highly gifted people and they are very similar to me including their general disdain for people not of our kind. Still when the social times come, they actually can participate. I have a WAY hard time and many times simply cannot (not capable). It is subtle but pretty significant. They can read other people's body Language and are aware of how people perceive them. I really am not and cannot. Etc... Subtle but significant...

Someautistic people can do those things though so be careful not to be too simplistic, especially since many autistic people are unaware of how much trouble we have socially. Such a person could just be a person who could pass well and had no social anxiety. There are many ways to be autistic.