Is giftedness more prevalent among Aspies?

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An old article (from 1946):

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... x/abstract

(bold mine)

This article is about "schizoid" children, not about AS; however, it is possible (or very probable) that what in 1946 was called "schizoid children" is more or less the same thing that in 2011 is called "children with Asperger Syndrome/PDD-NOS".

http://www.gifteddevelopment.com

The Gifted Development Center in Denver has a slew of articles on it's website about the impact of visual spatial based learning preferences on standardized tests scores.

They're the people who did the inhouse studies to justify using the General Abilities Index (GAI) as a more accurate estimation of "intelligence" in the visually based population.

GAI is arrived at by tossing out the Weschler Working Memory and Processing indices, and then averaging the remaining Verbal and Performance IQ scores. According to the GDC, only the last 2 correlate with intelligence.

As so many others have said, IQ is mostly BS. Very limited in what it takes into account. Often depressed by extraneous factors.

That said, considering how small a percentage of the human population is autistic, the ratio of unusally bright people in the group does seem to be larger than what is found in the general population. Contrary to small studies done on kids looking for average intelligence in the AS pop.

So, yes, perhaps, to the original question, if you use the definition of giftedness used by the GDC, which is GAI on the WISC4 or WAIS4 above 124, (if memory serves) or, unusal creative talent in a skilled domain: writing, art, sport etc... as determined by an expert in that field. For a quick and dirty conversion from Weschler IV IQ numbers to Stanford Binet, I think you're suppose to add 6 to the Weschler.

I do know that if you have very large gap between some of your indices and others, you will likely feel very frustrated with yourself, often. Enough to convince anyone that they are not gifted. Apparently, women most often have this feeling of being a fraud. Feeling stupid even with extremely high IQ scores.

Yeah, finally some statistics WITH sources.

1. Ok, I looked at the study, but I can not find were it gives the actual IQ scores of the groups.
2. If they were mixing AS with Autistic Disorder and PDD-NOS it makes sense for the average IQ to be slightly below average.
3. I saw another Swedish study that said the average IQ of people with Aspergers was somewhere from 102-104, I forgot exactly what it said and I'm too lazy to dig it back up.

I think the phrase you want is "stereotype threat."

I have links to three articles (that I will look up after I've had some sleep) that describe clear differences between SPD and AS.

Whether that's applicable in the above study is an open question, but schizoid personality disorder does seem to be a distinct thing separate from autism.

Were you able to read the full study? I seriously doubt Callista would just pull a number out of the air or otherwise lie.

No I did not read the full study, if the full study isn't the thing behind the linnk I don't know were to find it.

Now, if anything I can actually use this to back my case, if I use sly reasoning that may just be BS. Now, first we need to consider Hypothetical Fairy Disorder X. In the general population it can be assumed that if you graph IQ along the x-axis and occurrences along the y-axis that you should form a Gaussian curve. Now with Hypothetical Fairy Disorder X (TM) the graph is more or less a constant curve, except for at a certain point on both extremes were there is zero occurences of IQs in those ranges. HFDX has the same mean and mode as the general population. However, HDFX has higher rates of both genius and retardation than the general populace. From things that you said about how the study suggests that IQ is not effective with diagnosis or something, how this study mentions several groups that fall several deviations below the norm, and how this uses the Swedish model which apparently allows mental retardation for AS, at least according to some other sources, then I can come to the conclusion that Autism is probably closer to HDFX than to the general populace.

Now its time for some even more BS reasoning. This study is Swedish. Swedish people tend to act more Autistic than the general population of the Earth according to various informal sources. However, I don't recall anything saying that Sweden has higher rates of Aspergers syndrome, so Sweden must cut their AS diagnosis lower, so you must be more impaired, which implies lower IQ, expecially in an Autistic acting society like Sweden were the culture is more autistic and therefor Autistic people should also perform better socially unless they are otherwise impaired. Sweden also apparently let's Aspies be ret*d, while other societies would instead diagnose PDD-NOS or Autistic Disorder instead, there for farther bringing down the IQ among aspies in a Swedish study, implying that that the average IQ among Aspies is several points higher than it is here. Look, I did say that my reasoning here was complete BS.

I am trying to sleep (and failing) so I don't have a lot of time but that bolded bit - more impairment doesn't necessarily mean a lower IQ. You can be pretty impaired and still test at gifted or genius IQ. I don't want to run down the litany, but on the one hand I personally have a tested genius IQ, and on the other hand I have a therapist who is suggesting that I see about getting someone to help me with daily tasks because I have so much trouble with daily functioning.

I can at least find research that supports this for ADHD, but I haven't looked yet for any that explicitly supports autism. Still, I would be surprised if there were any evidence that IQ is directly correlated to functioning.

I said my reasoning wasn't very good and I was writing BS. I agree with you entirely, however, if you have two people whose Autistics traits were the same, only one was more intelligent, wouldn't be logical that the one with the higher IQ would function better? Also, there was two studies on the functioning of people with Austic Disorder, and one excluded those with an IQ below 50, and the results a lot more opptimistic for the group that excluded those with extremely low IQ.