Are we more intelligent, or do we just think we are?

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Most of my life, I had no idea I was autistic. I never really thought about how I compared to others intellectually. I found that worked well for me. When I learned about my autism, I became aware of high functioning. Now, I understand why I excelled at some things and not at others. Based on my (possibly unusual) route to today, I have and now believe that we all have areas where we shine and others where we don't, generally thinking...

I sincerely doubt that AS positively affects one's intelligence. I don't think it's detrimental or beneficial. It's different.

It's matrix s**t.

We think we are superior because of lack of ToM. Our strengths take on paramount importance in our minds and we miss the bigger picture. Normies speak in languages that are foreign to us.

This is not an imageboard. Why are you guys using the word 'normie'?

Neurotypical, normie, mentally unchallenged. Whatever.

I think a people have a tendency to view the world from a particular perspective. From that perspective some behaviour make sense and others do not.

Its like trying to make sense of the universe. When we consider large scale object particular patterns are more relevant than for small scale objects. Ultimately, regardless of the scale and the lens through which we view the universe every level is important in its own way. Determining importance depends on your focal point.

When it comes to intelligence what lens are we looking at? Does intelligence reflect an ability to get along with other beings (to build connections in order to survive?). Does it reflect introspection, awareness, an ability to analyze surroundings? I think how we might define intelligence might change depending on the focal point (what scale are we most interested in?).

So overall I think that because we have the bias of seeing the universe from our own perspective we might have the tendency to see ourselves as being more intelligent when it might just be intelligence from one angle.

That sounds like someone who has never even had to solve a crossword, and is entirely daft as a result. Just the image in my mind.

Also, I think it's a telling trait of this forum (in a good way), that the question of "are we more intelligent?", is met with "define intelligent."

Personally, I like to think of myself as intelligent. I spend a lot of time in my own head, so I like it filled with content, orderly arranged and tastefully decorated. Then, ever so often, I have a period of self-doubt. What if I'm not smart enough? What If I'm not even smart at all? What if I'm lying to myself, and everyone else is just going along with it? So I read. I basically hoard knowledge, often for its own sake. I watch debates, I read instructions on how to do things I'm probably never going to do. I follow lines of reasoning and strive to understand arguments. Last time I had a depression, the moment I realised that's what it was was when I couldn't follow the line of reasoning in a book I had already read twice. Man, that was harrowing.
But then, someone voices their opinion on a subject, a subject that I'm familiar with and that I'm well read on, and reveals beyond the shadow of a doubt that they've elected an opinion pretty much on gut reaction, I can't help that my first, tentative challenge to their position is going to come across as a full broadside. And so I appear strident, acerbic and unkind. All because I assume people put in as much time and energy into gathering knowledge as I do. So what does all this make me?

It makes you an Analytical Thinker personality type. Analytic Thinker personality type

I don't know if this is genetics or environment or both (probably both). I recognize it because I am the type and recognize it in others and get along well with others of the same type (although it is not mandatory that they be Analytical Thinkers for me to get along with them). My daughter is also an Analytical Thinker either because she inherited it from me or how I raised her (probably both). Unfortunately, she also has mental retardation. But that doesn't stop her from being an Analytical Thinker. It just makes the struggle to gather the information that much harder for her. It is bittersweet watching the intersection of mental retardation and Analytical Thinker personality type because sometimes it actually emotionally hurts her that she can't understand the information she is trying to gather assimilate.

If you fell into a harrowing period of self doubt and depression because you hit a wall in a book you read, imagine the pain of somebody with the same Analytical Thinker drive who is hamstrung by mental retardation.

Fascinating. I know I test as an INTJ on the Myers-Briggs test, this seems to be something similar.




It was more like walking a familiar path and suddenly finding yourself utterly lost, rather than hitting a wall. It was the point at which I realized I needed help, rather than the singular cause of my depression.

Far be it from me to say anything bad about your daughter, but the situation you describe sounds like an absolute nightmare . I can't help but wonder if that drive is a help or a liability in her condition: is her ability to gather and process information greater through sheer practice compared to someone with the same condition but without the same drive, or is her ability impaired enough that she wants to understand, but only understands that she doesn't?
I have a cousin with William's Syndrome. It's basically reverse autism; sociable, verbal and seemingly always bubbly. But she's essentially a child of 21. I doubt she's very analytical, and I imagine her to be walking in a pink cloud of blissful ignorance. If the price of understanding is suffering, I would still take it. But I wouldn't want the suffering if I couldn't have the understanding . Am I making sense anymore?

Most people think they have above-average IQ's. But that can't be true because average means most people, and most people are average in intelligence. Which is pretty dumb, actually.

If they can spell IQ, I'll be pleasantly surprised. If they know that IQ stands for Intelligence Quotient, I'll be amazed.

I have certain creative and intuitive gifts that make me feel intelligent, but I suspect my IQ is just slightly above average. All my life I've suffered from concentration issues, as well as anxieties, that have made me look like a complete idiot on many occasions. Fortunately, I no longer care what anyone thinks of me. I'm happy with who I am, and have conquered my low self-esteem issues (finally).

I am just guessing (and have not found any help from professionals or the literature) but as far as I can tell, her drive to gather and process information is both a help and a liability. It's a help in that it gets her to practice information gathering and processing. She asks me questions constantly and will repeat the answer dozens of times to herself. Even so, the answer doesn't always stick and she needs to ask again. I am careful to never say anything that would make her feel bad about this such as "you just asked me that 5 minutes ago and I told you". But she feels bad anyway. She will weep bitterly and sometimes throw things if she is unable to retrieve a piece of information that was in her head previously but has disappeared.

She also has extreme difficulty stringing together long strings of information such as 'if A happens then B will happen and then C will happen but if A doesn't happen then we go straight to D happening' or understanding conditional information such as 'A is true only if B is also true'. She also tries just as hard as she can to categorize things but many categories are fuzzy and overlap with other categories and this causes her much angst. Nevertheless, I'm pretty sure that she is understanding and remembering more than somebody with a similar degree of mental retardation but no analytical drive because of the energy she puts into practice.




I have often heard William's Syndrome described as the opposite of autism on account of the sociability. Being driven to analyze and understand does seem to lead to suffering- especially when understanding is just not possible or only partially possible. There is a stereotype of people with mental retardation that they are always happy on account of not understanding the painful realities around them. This could be true for some such as your cousin but its' not an inherent part of mental retardation so I always get annoyed when people assume it. You didn't, but many other people do when they hear she has mental retardation.

She goes to a special school where all the other kids also have mental retardation and she is somewhere in the middle of that population, neither the most nor the least affected. But at least from that I know that her stress is not coming from being bullied for her condition by other kids. It seems to be internal. It isn't that she can't measure up to what other people expect her to understand. It's that she can't understand and desperately wants to.

I can only hope the good aspect outweighs the bad.




Having short term memory issues now (the other day I dropped my keys while locking up, and came home later to find I never locked the door.) and them having been worse when I was younger, I can relate to that frustration. Could she learn to use a dictaphone? A habitual use of one would become a long term (routine) memory compensating for the short term memory , and consulting a device might make her feel less like she has to bother someone else about her not remembering, reducing the stress on her.



Oh, I know for a fact this is not so. While I do hope the joy my cousin expressess most of the time is genuine, there are plenty of factors that can make the pendulum swing right in the other direction. Since WS results from a genetic microdeletion (she's literally missing genes), it has issues across the board; musculoskeletal, metabolic, mental and even facial structure, so it's not going to be all ranbows and sunshine.




I'm glad to hear she's not bullied, no one needs that. Though I also know what it's like to be your own worst critic, and that internal voice can be pretty damned harsh.

That's a good idea. I'll get one and give it a try.