Aspies For Freedom

Can a Person with a High IQ Be "Very Autistic?"
When talking about the autism spectrum, it's common to use the terms "low functioning" and "high functioning." The implication is that "high functioning" autism is less of an issue for day-to-day functioning - and thus that "high functioning" autistics require less support, less treatment, and fewer services. But About.com reader Carole Rutherford, in a comment on this blog, had this to say:

    There is nothing at all holistic about an approach that talks about making too much of the persons problems and keeping them in perspective. A high level of intelligence does not diminish the level of autism/Asperger syndrome. In fact sometimes it heightens it. If I and many other parents know this to be true why do so many professionals ignore it and try to make our children and adults fit into neurotypical boxes?

From my own experience, I can say that I agree wholeheartedly with Carole in this sense: Many people with "high functioning autism" or Asperger syndrome have overwhelming sensory problems; accompanying mental illness (depression or biopolar disorder, for example); and/or extreme anxiety. These issues are very significant and very real - and can make daily life almost impossible with a good deal of support and intervention.

But are these issues - anxiety, depression, sensory issues - the same thing as autism? Or are they separate issues that occur for different reasons - perhaps as a result of having to navigate an often-incomprehensible world? At this point, none are part of the core diagnostic criteria. Even the experts are still on the fence regarding the question of whether anxiety, depression and other mental disorders are actually part and parcel of Asperger syndrome.

What's your understanding of this issue? Can a person be very high functioning and also "very autistic?" Or are some people with high functioning autism also suffering from separate - often severe - problems? And if a person with Asperger syndrome is, say, also anxious - should the anxiety be treated as part of the Asperger syndrome? Or should it be treated as a separate medical issue?
Friday September 14, 2007 | comments (1)  

Comments can be viewed here.
   http://autism.about.com/b/a/257931.htm

Should note that the entire above post is a quote from the article linked at the bottom.  (Had me confused for a minute.)

My own response is several things.

She's clearly using "high functioning/low functioning" as IQ over 70/IQ under 70.  But when tested with less biased testing instruments (I won't say unbiased, because the whole notion of IQ is biased to begin with) or with proper access to alternative communication techniques, the majority of autistic people are "high functioning" by that standard including most of the ones now considered "low functioning".

I don't think that anxiety and depression are part of the nature of being autistic, although I think we might tend more towards alertness which can lead in the direction of anxiety sometimes.  I don't think sensory issues is the right name for what are now called sensory issues, but I do think that the perceptual differences that underlie many of what are called "sensory issues" are part and parcel of being autistic.  I suspect that being autistic involves a complicated interplay of differences of thought, perception, and action (and the way those things interact together), combined with differences (between autistic people) that come up because of the brain focusing in different directions during development.

That said, I also find it difficult as a person to sit around dividing my brain into autistic and non-autistic portions, because I've only got one of it.

Also, a point made by a researcher is something I'm reminded of.  We don't know if "very autistic" means conventionally high-functioning, conventionally low-functioning, or neither.  It might be that whatever makes autistic people autistic would make autistic people more conventionally "functional" if there's more of it, and less if there's less of it.  It's just not known, yet we talk about "very autistic" as if it means "having a lot of difficulty with X, Y, and Z."  And we don't know that yet either way.

perasonally i dont use the lables as in IQ. I use it more in verbal ability and life skills.

In my experience of life I have never known a non-verbal autist that was able to live on their own. There may be some, I dont really know, but in my experience I have never heard of one so I consider non-verbal autists low functioning despite their IQ. On the other hand HFA in my experience are always verbal and are able to take care of themselves in basic needs (not including financial or other advanced things) but usually a HFA will be able to fix a meal for his or herself, bathe, toilet, ect... independantly.

I know a HFA who I consider to be slightly mentally retarded but she can still keep herself alive if left alone. And then I know an extremly intelligent non-verbal autist and he needs assistance for everything.

I think intelligence (or at least visual intelligence) is trained mainly by challanges we meet in daily lives. Autistic people seem to lack some brain functions, like sometimes not being able to differentiate between right and left (according to a science magazine it should be developed in the brain around the age of 4, not sure if it was 4 though). I think that gives us some extra challanges in daily lives that boost our intelligence. But not all autistic people doesn't know the difference between right and left, does that mean they are "less" autistic?

How would this affect mild-to-moderate AS, or Borderline folks?

Is that even included in this discussion?

It could mean anyone.  We don't know what the boundaries are, or what being close to normal means.  We don't even know what mild, moderate, or severe mean.  Because what makes autistic people autistic isn't fully defined yet.

I have the knack for saying autism isn't a measurable thing, it's people.

I would guess that would be the case as well.  It's worth noting that the way the IQ test was made, it was origionally intended to isolate children who needed special help, not to determine overall inteligance, although it has been used to do so.

Gah, my point with that was that an aspie who is signifigantly impared might show a low IQ while actually being signifigantly smarter, due to how the test itself is designed.

I found this quite hilarious, because it's so true!

I agree you can rate through the roof on IQ tests yet not be particularly functional, yet a lower-IQ person copes much better.  In my head I define it as the difference between being clever (as in bookwork) and smart (as in life skills).

(Related: I'm getting the results of my proper, psychologist-done IQ test on Thursday.  I've done various online tests and got wildly varying results from 97 to 146, so I'll let you know how I get on...)

Yeah, I've had a slightly wider spread than that of scores (subtract 12 points from one and add 14 to the other and you get the ends of my range), which is one reason I think that kind of testing is well-nigh useless.  If I had two scores even near each other I might trust it slightly more.  But probably not.

To be fair, I got the "only got one _________" from a friend of mine.  She gets asked whether pain in her back is from the autoimmune disease she got recently or the complications of scoliosis surgery she's had most of her life.  She says, "How am I supposed to know, I've only got one spine," or something like that.  But it's very true.  It's hard to divide your body up when you're the one living in it.

And what if you're like me--not particularly good at either?

Yeah. There are different kinds of intelligence and I hate it when people get all snooty about their IQ.

IQ tests are very good at measuring how good you are at IQ tests.

I particularly despise the ones that use culture-specific questions to test memory, as in requiring the testee to complete a 'well-known' saying. Well-known by WHOM exactly?

It is my personal understanding that our Autism is related to our brains functioning in a more joined-up manner than those of NTs - whose brains, according to a recent television programme, start destroying connections between various regions before they are even born.

In my case, my apparent lack of social development when younger was entirely due to my brain busily processing so much input from the world that would be unnoticed by NTs.

I really couldn't cope with the totally unpredictable humans as well until I was much older and had sorted out such important things as the differences between time, space and colour - e.g. that on Sunday, Monday was NOT in the kitchen and wasn't black, a situation that felt absolutely true to me when I was nearly five.

Once I had the physics of this strange planet worked out, I could then start on the anthropology!

This was exactly the problem with one of the tests I was given 2 years ago. For instance, in what was called the Test of Pragmatic Speech, I scored in the bottom 8% of people my age, and on the Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language, I did likewise - in this latter test, there were sections asking me to give the meaning of non-literal phrases, such as idioms.

The problem was, although I was aware of the concept of nonliteral language, I wonder how I can be expected to understand an idiom if I have never heard it? Or, at least, if I have heard it but it has never been explained to me what it means? Do NTs infer the literal meanings of these phrases, without being told? If so, how?

So, they determine that I am incapable of understanding most nonliteral language simply because I have not been exposed to the examples given in the test questions. In addition to this, the idiomatic language in popular usage changes from generation to generation, such that many NT peers are just as confused as I am when a middle-aged person says something widely understood for their generation - not to mention cultural and socio-economic differences.

I think for me, even when I am told what the meaning is, that it is much harder for me to remember it, because instead of remembering just the meaning of a new word (which is hard enough for me, for English anyway), but remembering a string of words to represent the first string of words - especially since spoken language is my weakest aspect, whether I am doing the speaking or the listening.

I am considered to have high IQ, and to be high-functioning. However, I am often at a loss for words, and when school officials speak to me, I find myself without words to say anything. I also experience sensory overload fairly frequently, and I stim for most of my waking hours - my repertoire including rocking, leg shaking, and hand gestures - the last of which some school staff tried to get rid of, but which have returned in full swing exuberantly, along with my other stims for a happy senior year!