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?