Asperger's, Autism, and I.Q.

It seems that people who process sensory information differently are those we identify as having a high I.Q.

Of course, "sensory processing problems" is a main aspect of autism. Does this mean that those with autism ought to have a high I.Q.?

Well, historically people with autism have been shown to have lower I.Q.s than the general population. However, those with Asperger's generally are seen to have higher I.Q.'s than average. Now, if Asperger's is, in many ways, simply autism without the language delay, then this raises some interesting issues. Are the low I.Q. scores for those with autism a result of language issues? It seems that that may in fact be the case. Indeed, when alternative measurements of intelligence have been used with certain people with autism, their I.Q. scores jumped from "mentally retarded" to "genius."

Consider the results from the first article. Two of the aspects of people with high I.Q.s are the ability to focus and to pick out details. These are aspects commonly found in people with Asperger's especially. It is part of bottom-up thinking -- the details give rise to the big picture for someone with autism. Neurotypicals, on the other hand, see the big picture first -- this is part of top-down thinking. As a result, they may miss the details, just as bottom-up thinkers may miss the big picture.

In a sense, this means that "high I.Q." is practically equivalent with "having autism." Or at least "having Asperger's." And as we find more and better ways of reaching non-verbal and low-verbal autistics, I suspect we will find more and more high I.Q.s out there.

Part of the issue involves the general ability to integrate the details. Integration of details becomes increasingly problematic as you move along the autism spectrum. Those with Asperger's can integrate the best among those on the spectrum, whereas the most sever may not be able to integrate at all. Such a person would, of course, be identified as having severe mental deficiency, since they cannot make any sense of the world at all. The result, it would seem to me, would be a sort of U-shaped range of I.Q., with large numbers with high I.Q. being closer to the Asperger's end and there being a tipping point of inability to integrate then resulting in very low I.Q.s at the extreme other end.

The result of this would be a situation where those with Asperger's would appear to have high I.Q.s on average, whereas those with autism would appear to have average I.Q.'s on average. Of course, if you average a group that in fact has two groups in it -- one with high I.Q. and another with low I.Q. -- you would expect the average of that larger group to be average I.Q. All of which points to some problems with looking at groups statistically without paying much attention to the details.