Aspies For Freedom

I have never in my entire life made friends with or admired anyone on the basis of their IQ. I've certainly never asked what people's IQ scores are. It would be silly. As I have said before, a high IQ score means that you are good at the particular test that you sat. In my opinion it has at best a tenuous connection with a person's intelligence, and has no connection whatever with what kind of person they are.

Some of the most 'intelligent' people I have known were pretentious prats. After a fairly rotten time at school I didn't (and don't) care for people who boasted that they had better academic qualifications than me and were therefore superior. Or for the ones that were good at sport and gloated at my clumsiness, or effortlessly fashionable and mocked my inability to be well-dressed.

I made friends with people who like people. Who encouraged me to do my best at the things I could do and not compare myself unfavourably with people who could do things that I can't.

I like you, aliengirl and Batman55, because you are both kind; you both write well-thought-out, interesting posts and make me think! I like you both because you come across as pleasant people.

I really could not care less what some tests might tell you about your intelligence. That has no relevence to me whatsoever, and, I suspect, to most other people here. I really think that the establishment of IQ tests is one of the worst things imposed on children. IQ tests are unnecessarily divisive and yet of little, if any, practical use.

I'm pleased that aliengirl is happy with who she is, and I'm sad that Batman55 isn't happy with himself. I wish that I could somehow restore the self-esteem of Batman and the other unhappy people I sometimes see posting here. I wish that I could create a shield around them that would protect them from the nastiness of others.

I've tried to build that resilience into my own kids and I'm sad when other people don't have it.

First - before you read any further, please accept this as fact. I am not annoyed, angry or upset in any way, and I like you very much.

Please - did you read my whole post? I did not, and would not, say anything whatsoever about retardation - and the only 'group' I put you in was the 'group of people I like and admire'!

You posted earlier in this thread that you have a poor self-image, and admit at the end of this post that you have low self-esteem, and I suspect that it sometimes may cause you to read negative things into a post that just aren't there. I know how tempting it is to lash out at others when you are hurting - I've been there. I know how it feels; hurting so badly that I found it impossible to see positive praise as truthful, and instead interpreted every comment as negative.

I had severe depression on several occasions. Then, eventually, I imagined my negative thoughts to be coming from a nasty little gnome, and imagined locking up said gnome into a sound-proof box. It took a long time, but it worked - and the gnome has been locked up for years. I could not tolerate medication, and would have been hopeless with therapy, so that was the way I dealt with it.

For interest, here is a link to an excerpt from Dealing With Manipulative People
http://www.rickross.com/reference/brainw...ing11.html

Hi Batman55,

No, I haven't had these tests. I need to email my neurodevelopmental specialist, so I will mention this to him.

Thanks

I've never had an 'official' IQ test - I've only done online tests which are not really realiable

Hi,
Well, I don't know anyone in my health authority who has had an IQ test - but I know different health authorities do different things.

I've had cognitive and learning tests - just not a specific IQ test or a test that came up with any kind of 'number' or measurement (other than my dyslexia test).

I'm sure a lot of you have already read this, but I though I'd post it here just in case:
http://aspergersquare8.blogspot.com/2008...label.html

I was given this test after my diagnosis of AS so that they could see how it correlated with their medical opinion.

I got 49! (out of 50) even though I fully expected that I would get a high score, being autistic and all, I was quite alarmed that it was as high as 49!

Just thought I'd revive this thread as I had a question which I thought was kind of relevant.

I was just wondering if anyone here finds that certain tasks seem to intefere with their cognitive abilities?

For example, I have tried doing Sudoku as I thought that trying to do a puzzle like that might be a good excercise for me. Needless to say it took numerous attempts before I worked out how to do it (and others seem to find it frustratingly easy) but I have always found that afterwards I struggle with all other tasks that I am usually okay with.

It is as though the effort of sudoku somehow causes me problems that mean I can't function well enough cognitively afterwards to carry out even basic tasks. It is almost as though it temporarily damages me!

This is just one example - there are other tasks that can cause this in me too, but it would take a long time to list them all!

Does anyone else (especially people with learning difficulties) have any comparable experiences?
Could anyone give any possible explanations for this?

Thanks

Whether or not they are hard depends on the individual person's ability.

I'm learning disabled so for me such things are very hard.

I'm interested to hear from other people who find such things hard and / or who find that working on tasks they find difficult has a temporary  'knock on' effect on their ability to perform other tasks that are normally not difficult for them, and also any theories as to why this is.

Thanks Korrigan - this is really interesting and I can very much relate to your daughter's experience.

And it's great to see you back here!

Out of interest, does your daughter find that colour overlays / irlen lenses help?
I have a lot of difficulty with black and white colour schemes.

Having said that, I can get overloaded by too much visual information too - regardless of colour scheme - but if it is black on white that can exacerbate the problem (for me).

Our second son is dyslexic. When he was here on his recent visit I was amazed to find him reading really quickly - he has discovered that covering all the lines below the one he's reading with a piece of red paper enables his mind to focus on that line. He told me other colours work too, just not as well. For him, it has to be red.

Just got picked on in another forum that professes to be for disabled people but as soon as I came out as learning disabled every ganged up on me!

I've written a complaint to the mods there but doubt they'll do anything. *sigh*

On these more general disability sites, it seems that all disabled people should stick together - apart from the learning disabled who should just get lost.

Sorry to whinge. It's probably my fault for naively thinking that perhaps x general disability forum will be different.....

But hey, at least people on AFF are nice

Thanks Korrigan and Lestat.

I have been so lucky to find support and kindness here at AFF.

Obviously, I'm biased, but this is by far my favourite online forum!