Published on 12, July, 2020
We often get posts on the form asking for advice with autistic children. And I can't help but notice the requests overwhelmingly relate to low functioning autistic children. As someone who is quite high functioning and had a very disrupted and turbulent childhood I can guarantee you it's not because high functioning autistic children don't have just as many issues. Nore is it that high functioning autistic children are particularly rare. We recently had a discussion on this point in another thread and figures I dug up indicated around 40%+ of autistic children being diagnosed these days are of average or above average intelligence.
So the question I'm asking is this. Why don't those parents come looking for help? Is it because the main stream schooling and support systems are so much better at supporting high functioning children? I doubt it. Is it because they tend to think of their child’s behaviour as 'naughty' not 'autistic?' Is it maybe they don't accept or agree with their child’s diagnosis? What do you think it is?
More to the point:
Edit ps: For the simplification of this entire discussion and to avoid a long drawnout arguments over semantics. Instead of high functioning we shall say high IQ meaning an IQ of 85+ and instead of low functioning we will say low IQ meaning an IQ less than 85. As measured on a standard clinically approved IQ test.
If I remember correctly, some of the latest figures on intelligence in autistic people (difficult to measure accurately!) suggest 40% above average intelligence, 38% below and 22% around the average. This suggests that autistic people tend to cluster towards either extreme, rather than towards the middle ground.
Sorry. How is the intelligence being measured, because there are lots of different types of intelligence, puzzles, visual exercises, memory, so someone might score badly on one but very well on another? Or is it taken as an average among all types of intelligence. There may also be a problem with the environment the person is born into. Is autism spread evenly among all socio-economic backgrounds (don't know if this is the right phrase) or is it more common in some then others? This might then affect how the intelligence is measured. E.g Richer parents have more access to buying puzzles and so on so kids grow up to be better at solving puzzles. I don't really know.
Here’s a more controversial point of view. maybe if you have rich parents that make you play with puzzles you actually grow up to have a higher IQ. There is some evidence to suggest that a lack of education in childhood can cause adults to have lower IQs than they otherwise would have.
First of all I would say that an IQ test done at home isnt a proper IQ test. They’re meant to be administered by a professional in a controlled environment. So if someone just happened to have an IQ test lying around then I question if it wasn’t an official clinically approved one. And even if it was it can’t have been applied surely under clinically approved standards?
placing that aside. IQ tests are not meant to be a measure of whether people sound intelligent. Also I would say if you deliberately do an IQ test two different ways, which is what I think you’re implying your teacher did, then by definition one of those two ways can’t of been you doing your best.
and again clinically approved IQ tests are used across nations. while there has been some evidence that some nations scored better on these tests than others those discrepancies tend to disappear when you adjust for education which was what I was referring to when I said education can affect IQ.
so I have to ask have any of your IQ test been administered by a professional such as a psychiatrist or psychologist. Were any of them standardised IQ tests as opposed to ones you’re getting a booklet from the shop or off the Internet?
Peter said:Here’s a more controversial point of view. maybe if you have rich parents that make you play with puzzles you actually grow up to have a higher IQ. There is some evidence to suggest that a lack of education in childhood can cause adults to have lower IQs than they otherwise would have.
When I was in my teenage years I used to go around doing odd jobs for whoever wanted me to do them, with gardening jobs being quite common, and sometimes I would get to hear life histories or get into lengthy discussions during or after the work set for me.
On one occasion, one of my employees asked me if I would like to join her at an intellectual get together, in that her friends found her reports of our discussions together to be rather interesting ~ which I was quite excited about as almost everyone either did not understand what I liked talk about, or just got seriously bored.
It turned out that these intellectual get togethers, were attended by people with IQ scores above 150 or 160 ~ or something like that, which was a major breath of fresh air for me because so much information was just freely flowing, and almost everyone was thoroughly enjoying it.
The person who was not enjoying it ~ was the person who preferred being or making himself the centre of attention, and as it turned had one of the highest IQs out of least that lot, but I somewhat ruined his previously established enjoyment of which by sharing the centre of attention with everybody who wanted to speak with me, or who I really wanted to listen to.
The person in question challenged me to do an IQ test competition with, and although I have always been an immutable equalitarian without any competitive spirit ~ I was really interested in doing an IQ test, what with hearing a lot about them and all that.
Anyway, we did the test, and everybody waited for the results ~ most with baited breaths to some extent. The highest IQ person scored above 160 (or thereabouts) and I scored 60 ~ I did not get to go back to the High IQ club, but the rest of the club were very impressed with how furious the high IQ person was about me being deemed a threat to their status.
According to one source:
Generally, a person with an IQ of 60 has different characteristics which include;
People with low IQ levels are categorized into various mental ages. Usually, for an IQ of 60, the mental is the same as that of a third grader. Hence such a person’s mental age is the same as a 6 or 7 years old child.
https://lmshero.com/60-iq/
People are generally quite surprised or even considerably shocked by my IQ scores, with my highest being 63, but things are as they and such is life.
One thing I found quite relevant is that different IQ tests for different nations of people can render a high score in one as a low scorer in another ~ which If I recall correctly involved in one case African and American people taking each other's tests as being an indicative example.
Also of my tutors as being a childhood genius completely failed and completely passed an IQ test by taking it twice but answering each one correctly in two different ways, with the point being that IQ tests are only really indicative of how programmable people are, rather than how experientially knowledgeable they are.
Being dyslexic and having dyscalculia has really not helped in some respects (particularly in Algebra and mathematics in general), but having to read words and sentences several times other whilst contextually cross referencing them with everything else I have seen, read and heard others speaking about ~ has meant that I read in the full sense of the term, rather than just stockpiling the words in my mind and nothing more.
In respect though of having Level 1 / high social functioning Autism, otherwise known as Asperger's Syndrome, my school reports always followed roughly the same theme, i.e., "If only [Deepthought] would apply himself to the same extent that he does in other subjects!!!"
It was thought that I was definite university material, and even got the offer of a scholarship at Oxford ~ providing of course I got the appropriate qualifications, which I did not because of walking out at the end of one of the required examinations with the exam paper all screwed in my hand. I was suffering from a major seizure hangover and could not meet my own exacting standards, and had no time, energy or wherewithal to redo it adequately.