Was Forrest Gump an autisitic characters?

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Callista
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20 Dec 2009, 3:46 pm

TPE2 wrote:
2ukenkerl wrote:
Spokane_Girl wrote:
He was considered to be MR. Back then IQ of 75 was in the MR range until 1992 they lowered it to 70. Now he be considered borderline, no longer MR.


WOW, and someone here said people are gettiing smarter! :roll:

One wonders why they went to so much effort to lower it 5 points.


In reality, if people are getting smarter, makes sense to lower the IQ level for mental retardation: if the average person has, by definition, an IQ of 100, and the inteligence is rising, these mean that, today, an IQ of 70 can mean more inteligence than an IQ of 75 some decades ago.
I'm just guessing, but it may have something to do with the transition from mental ages to standard deviations to measure IQs. 75 is 1/4th of 100, whereas 70 is exactly two standard deviations below the mean.

For the record, though, mental retardation cannot be diagnosed, no matter how bad you are at taking IQ tests, unless there is impairment and/or delay in learning adaptive skills. So there are people who score low, but who live quite normally without ever needing assistance--for the most part, they tend to be in groups for whom the IQ test was not designed, such as immigrants, people outside of Western culture, and people who have not been exposed to formal education. However, specific learning disabilities can also cause a low score that is not accompanied by adaptive skill delay.

I would say Forrest Gump, even if he had scored below 70, falls into the region of "cannot be diagnosed as MR because adaptive skills are fine"--low-normal, maybe, but still fine. He's especially good at understanding other people; an interesting juxtaposition of good social skills, low academic ability, and eccentric personality. Maybe that's what makes him such a fun character to watch.


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Xelebes
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20 Dec 2009, 4:52 pm

Read the book. It tells you what is wrong with Forrest.


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