Mental Development

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Do autistics develop more slowly mentally? I've noticed that I developed more slowly mentally than others. I couldn't distinguish between time until I was at least 10. My mature thinking developed more slowly and it took me until I was at least 17 to learn to "read between the lines" so to speak.

No not overall. They tend to develop things out of sequence or not at all but don't develop especially slowly.

I think they do in some ways, but develop more rapidly than others in some other ways.

Yes. It is a developmental disorder meaning that the autistic person does not achieve the same level of development as his peers until later (sometimes not at all).

For example, an autistic person may excel academically, but be very behind everyone else socially.



Again, this can vary depending on what area of development you're talking about. "Mature thinking" and "reading between the lines" can be much harder than, say, math or science. These social skills must be taught, so they often develop fully only later in life.

That entirely depends on what you mean by 'mentally'. Hans Asperger referred to his young HFA subjects as 'Little Professors' because of their extensive vocabularies and ability to rapidly acquire voluminous amounts of information on their personal obsessive interests.

What develops more slowly are social skills, as we have a congenital disability in recognizing nonverbal signals. There is also a marked underdevelopment of Executive Function, which tends to virtually stop maturing beyond the teenage years, meaning we have difficulty planning and executing complex sets of actions.

So on some levels, invisible to anyone except those who live with us, there are developmental problems. But we are in no way intellectually ret*d.

That's exactly what I meant.

I was late to be able to tell the time, and to do maths at school. I mastered both of those eventually, but it took me longer to do it than the more intelligent among my peers. I am a slow learner but I do try to learn as much as I can.

I think autistics develop more slowly socially, but fine in all other things. I see it that I must learn social things, as I learned to say, read, rather than that social things come naturally to other people.

It's not just socially. Emotionally is a big one.
Also motor skills-- don't know if that counts though.