Are there any Aspies with Below Average IQ?

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Just found out that my 14 year old son, when he was five, was tested at about 60 for his IQ. Then, a few years later, tested at 130. He now tests around 100 -- average -- and yet, he gets A's and B's in regular ed classes.

IQ tests generally mean very little. ESPECIALLY when the child is young, and not very good at communication. I think the scores are interesting, but don't predict intelligence all that much.

No. Read the psychology textbooks; read the journals; read the DSM. "Aspies are smart" is a stereotype--a false one--that has nothing to do with the diagnostic criteria. There is no "higher than average intelligence" requirement for Asperger's. The only requirement is "no developmental delay", and that is <70. Aspies, on average, are not significantly smarter than NTs except for the statistical artifact of the one or two IQ point difference caused by removing all the <70 people from the Asperger's diagnosis.

I will grant that some doctors do get caught in the stereotype rather than using the criteria as they are written, and will be more likely to diagnose someone as regular autism rather than Asperger's if he doesn't seem intelligent, and more likely to diagnose someone as Asperger's if he does seem intelligent. But that is not the way it should be done; this doctor is using a spurious criterion that should not be used, and is about as worthwhile for diagnosis as the doctor's impression of "high functioning" or "low functioning" (that is, not at all).

What, so you're saying I can't have Asperger's because my IQ is normal? Or my sibling can't be HFA because she is very intelligent? You're horribly misinformed.

When was in the phyc ward as a kid, they tested my IQ ( I did not know at the time) and it came back 79. The phycatrist also said I was ret*d and would grow up to be in a group home or assisted living. She also was fully aware of the bullying but her solution was to blame it on me and pump me full of drugs.

No.

I suppose that this error is the result of a process like this:

1 - DSM says "no clinically significant delay in cognitive development "

2 - In "common language" this is usually translated as "average or above average inteligence"

3 - And "average or above average inteligence" quicker is simplified to "above average intelligence"

Yes, and especially when you have a disability or are not a mathematician. (My math teacher told me that his scored were higher than those he had when he was young because he had the required knowledge and "trained" his mind).

My very brilliant and somewhat aspie friend has taken an IQ test and had less than 100... She would be what you call a student who get straight A's, had almost passed the entry exam for the best litterary college in our country and just passed her exam to become a latin teacher though it's very hard to pass and she didn't work a lot on it.

My lack of abilities in spatial tests or maths tests are linked with my dyspraxia and suspected dyscalculia. I even took the same online test twice for fun, I scored pretty high one day and 20 points lower the other day.


I do think that most Aspies have an area in which they are "above average" and IQ can't measure all of these areas. It's too bad because you can have an average or below average while still having no real mental retardation and be actually intelligent or average. I agree that someone who displays all the characteristics of Asperger should be diagnosed with it even with a lower IQ as long as there are no other striking difference caused by no other disorder than a different kind of autism (because someone who has both Asperger and dyscalculia or bipolar or any other disorder will display other characteristics).

Mine is average, now. Nothing to write home, about - really.

No dear. I think a lot of doctors are getting on the politically correct bandwagon and saying that HFA and AS are the same thing. This causes a lot of misinformation to be out there. Kind of like nobody is mentally ret*d anymore, they are "intellectually challenged" or some other such nonsense. But if it will make you feel better, I will call you an aspie.

This is almost a religious argument. As in "You're not really a Christian because you don't believe X".

There are the persons who invented the label "Asperger's Syndrome" (Lorna Wing, Gillberg, etc.) who are saying, for decades, that "Asperger's Syndrome" is simply a way of saying "High Functioning Autism" without scaring parents and teachers.

If you disagree, create the "n4mwd's syndrome".

Thanks for all of the replies everyone! I feel a bit better about my son's scores now. I guess it doesn't really matter if he is Aspie or HFA, since it is all on the spectrum. I guess PDD-NOS is the best diagnosis for him, but the doctor and the school both put the possible Aspergers on the diagnosis. The developmental pediatrician diagnosed him at 2.5, but he did not do an IQ test at that early of an age. The school did the testing when he was almost 5, and came back with the 65 score. Thanks for all of the advice. I truly do not believe that my son is mentally ret*d. I just see that his brain is developing on a slower track, but the development is there and it continues to progress. I probably will ask to have him retested when he is older. I just want to be realistic about what the future holds for my son. I am not giving up hope on him just yet!! !

I think what makes everyone think that he could be an Aspie is that he has an excellent memory. He knows what kind of car everyone drives. He will go up to people and ask them their name, and then he will ask them "What kind of car do you drive?" LOL!

No it's not. The Bible is open to widely different interpretations; the DSM criteria not so much. But this has nothing to do with religion, anyway, only with you being wrong.

Yeah. HFA and Asperger's are functionally identical in adulthood, and overlap so much that they aren't even really distinguishable in childhood, either. They're pretty much the same thing.

--Aspies usually have highly unusual speech, which should put them in the classic autism category, or have delays in learning to take care of themselves. These cases are usually only diagnosed Asperger's because of a doctor's subjective impression of "high-functioning" or "verbal", even though they should by rights be diagnosed as plain "autistic disorder".

--Most classic autistics learn to speak before the age of five; most of the rest, before nine. Given a normal or higher IQ (>70), they almost always learn to speak before five (the IQ score tends to be effect, not cause, though, because you can't get a really high IQ score if you're crap at the verbal portion). Some of the ones who don't learn to speak, though, will get really good scores on non-verbal IQ tests; so there's no telling from whether someone can speak, how good they are at other stuff.

--In adulthood, if you pick out the classic autistics who've learned speech and can take care of their own basic needs (again, this is most of them), you can put them in a group with people diagnosed Asperger's, and no one can tell the difference. The differences have usually vanished by the time the groups are in their teens.

They're really only separate diagnoses because Kanner's autism became mainstream first, and had "speech delay" as a requirement; so they had to add Asperger's as a category without speech delay. The problem, of course, is that we now know autism can occur with or without speech delay; it's the communication delay (verbal, non-verbal, emotional, relational) that's really the universal factor. I'm glad we had the Asperger's diagnosis, though, because it taught us that autistics do not need to be speech-delayed or developmentally delayed.

Thank you so much Callista! Your posts are most helpful and informational. Like you said, I am just going to focus on his strengths and weaknesses and go from there.

Callista-
I hope you look at this thread again, because I came across his Composite Scores and this is how it was broken down:\\

Verbal 66
Nonverbal Reasoning 84
Spatial Ability 65

Do you have any ideas on what this means?

Thanks for you help!

Slightly OT. Over in the Parenting Forum, Tracker just posted a PDF file of a book he wrote for parents of kids on the spectrum. I downloaded it and it's pure gold.

Which IQ test was this?


Was it a WISC???



I just took the WAIS-IV and it yields nothing but my full scale score and the four index scores. The test ITSELF says nothing about about my "nonverbal reasoning" or "spatial ability".

I'm wondering if they specify these things on the WISC for some reason because they most certainly do not on the WAIS-IV.


The psychologists who administered my tests have often commented on my "spatial ability" or "nonverbal reasoning", but not in terms of any actual scores. The scores associated with these things were found in PIQ/ the Perceptual-Organizational index on the older WAIS tests and just in the PCI on the latest version (WAIS-IV.)

Perhaps this wasn't even a Weschler IQ test that your son had.