late bloomers

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can someone be a late bloomer in intelligence??i mean his brain somehow developed and while by the age of 6 he had an iq of 83 by the growth of brain by years he is a late bloomer and his iq is now 96 lets say

Well, as I understand it, someone' IQ can only change by one or two points over a lifetime, so I doubt it's possibly for someone to become a late bloomer in terms of intelligence. But it's definitely possible to become a late social bloomer.

The test, and who runs it, have all sorts of range.

My IQ went up every year growing up. I don't think it's gone any higher since my teen years. I scored above average when I was 12 when I was being tested for AS.

I agree with this. Also the child's approach to the test and his age could be factors. At six I know that I didn't have any sense of competitiveness, or pride of achievement -- except with my family because I cared what my parents and older siblings thought of me. Strangers? Not so much. I might not have realized the importance of putting my best effort into such a test at that time. I paid attention to what interested me, and if it didn't, I didn't much care about it. I might have just zoned out -- especially if there were many strangers around and I felt overwhelmed. Additionally, stress, to this day, puts my brain into a fog.

So I guess I'd question where and how the test was administered, and what the child's attitude was before and after.

But I agree actual IQ probably doesn't change much. So the question is, why didn't the first test accurately measure his IQ? I would also imagine there's a greater likelihood of a falsely low score than a falsely high score.

It really depends on the test. I recently scored 140 on a test but scored lower when I was younger, and between the earliest test and the most recent, I had an even lower score than the initial one. I think it depends more on test than anything -- especially TIMED tests. Usually an untimed test will yield a higher (and more accurate) score. The highest-ceiling tests are all untimed.

One of the criticisms/weaknesses with IQ tests is that they sometimes measure how well you've learned the academics from school more than your actual cognitive capabilities/intelligence. I can imagine if a person is very smart, but just learning delayed or with communication problems, then there might be an increase in IQ scores later in life. Also, there have been studies that show that the brain becomes smarter if it's used more.

I missed virtually all of my early education as a result of abuse but scored well above average on an IQ test so I'm not so sure this is really accurate or true.

I've actually never met a person who hasn't had higher and higher scores on IQ tests throughout life. Your actual IQ is supposed to remain fixed/consistent, but they haven't found a way to measure it so that it remains fixed. This idea of measuring intelligence is itself flawed, of course, but I've found that I'm far more patient and rational with IQ tests than I used to be. I used to think most questions were a trick and would therefore second-guess myself. Now I'm better at discriminating an answer, but I can't say much, if any of it, is through academic learning. I've found that academic learning is more about putting in effort than intelligence; "jumping through hoops". IQ tests are more about figuring out the pattern...there is always some pattern, and I've spent hours on tests before just to get to the bottom of what they are trying to ask me. It's the timed tests that I have trouble with because there simply isn't enough time for me to figure out what they want me to. The timing also causes anxiety and lowers scores, in general.

it could also be possible that the intelligence was always there, but never properly tapped....and sometimes people need to understand what they actually have at their disposable better to use what smarts they got.

People used to tell me all thru growing up "you're such a smart guy"...and I never really understood why they kept saying it. I really didn't show--at the time--that I was any smarter than anyone else.

That was then, though. Now...totally different story.

One thing I'll never forget: I was going to see my mom's cardiologist to check on my own heart, after she'd passed on..as at the time, I was having pretty bad chest pains.

Apparently, it was due to stress, and there was nothing wrong with my heart, which was good to hear.

I never forgot though: I told him I was a cashier at a grocery store.

He told me "really? that's it? I could see you doing so much more."

6 years later, I totally understand that now

On the topic of late blooming...I think it's one of the key hallmarks of HFA's who lead successful and happy lives, and perhaps all autists who are fortunate enough to be in a good and nurturing environment. We don't 'get it' (socially and verbally or whatever) when the other kids do...we're not on the same developmental time track...but we do grow socially and emotionally, and we grow more later and perhaps more deeply or in other directions than NTs.

It's interesting that a child's diagnosis of autism being related to parental age could be one of those correlations that is not exactly a causation. In other words, it could be that autists develop more slowly, naturally find mates and marry later and reproduce (kids on the spectrum also) later than NTs. The idea that older fathers, with their damaged mutated genes, being the 'cause' of autism might be incorrect. Perhaps it's that older fathers are AS men who found and married their mates later...Being Aspies, they just weren't ready for intimate relationships in their teens and twenties (or thirties even)...I'm not suggesting that there isn't a genetic link...that's pretty well established. But maybe it's a hallmark of Aspies and others to be 'later bloomers', the children of other late bloomers who are themselves on the spectrum.

I'm 61 now and it's taken me years, and years, and years, to learn to read the 'cues' (still working on it). I have kids who were never diagnosed, but are clearly on the fringes of the spectrum themselves...my dad and uncle were classic Aspies. My dad learned how to be more social because of my mom...but my Uncle was a 'character' in his town all his life.

I don't believe there can't be exceptions. If your brains developing normally there shouldn't ever be a difference of more than one or two points but what if someone has a defect or an altered path of development?

Say the speed of a typical person's development can be represented visually by a graph of the function Y=X^1/2. I just picked that equation as an example because people normally grow faster during childhood it isn't based on anything it's more of a visual metaphor.

Now what if someone had an altered brain with a very weird rate of development. From ages 0-19 the graph looks like that of the function Y=X^3/2. The growth rate would be very slow at first and the person would be very far behind for his/her age in the early years.

Later on the person would have an increasing growth rate instead of a decreasing one and he/she would appear to catch up with everyone else his/her age because he's growing faster than them at that given time. For his/her age group he might be about average so his/her IQ would be at the median of 100.


Don't you think it's possible for someone to have an abnormal pattern of development? Couldn't such an abnormal pattern result in bizarre fluctuations in IQ?