intelligence

blueblood said:

i feel like out of anyone i know that i'm the dumbest and that i can never be as smart as everyone else

Totally agree with that, I’m too very high functioning. I struggle to retain information unless it really interests me and generally don’t feel intelligent at all. Don’t think I come across as intelligent either as I struggle to find the right words when I’m in a conversation (that can be hard work depending upon who the person is)

Don’t be so hard on yourself and know that you will have strengths. You just need to find them. I’m not there yet either. 

You make a good point when tests are biased towards people from a particular nationality, (adult) age group, or other background.

A similar phenomenon happens in the style of education. I'm vaguely aware of a KS3 level maths course from the past that was very successful with white English kids from lower class and less well off backgrounds, and black Jamaican kids, but it fell down badly with south Asian kids.

Reminds me of a quiz I took part in at school when I was about 10. I was one of the most successful pupils in the class when it came to tests, exams etc. but I was one of the least successful in the quiz. The reason? A lot of the questions were on Scottish general knowledge, which was fair enough given I was going to school in Glasgow at the time, but I had lived in England until the age of 7.

Hah. Think I was put in for one of those scholarship exams and flunked the creative writing as I didn't want to go anyway.

Cultural bias has long been a criticism of IQ tests. I also recently looked at the 'faux pas' test by Baron-Cohen and another. I though they should really have called it the MCQ or 'how middle-class are you?'  If two bottles of prosecco and and avocado cost...

A posh fee paying school had an entrance exam consisting of three papers - English, maths, and general knowledge. There was nothing particularly special about the English and maths papers but the general knowledge paper was interesting because it contained many questions that could only be correctly answered by kids who came from culturally upper middle class backgrounds unless by chance they happened to know the answers. There were even questions relating to opera and varieties of wine.

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned the difference between intelligence and knowing (useless?) facts. This is a recurring subject in both the AS and home education communities. There are a lot of kids out there who are thought of as being clever or intelligent, or referred to as walking encyclopedias, but in reality they just know mountains of facts. More often than not they aren't really much more intelligent than average kids their own age and don't always get good GCSE grades. The internet has devalued such people in the real world because a Google search has reduced the benefits in knowing facts.

I'm surprised that this hasn't been mentioned.

Never confuse intelligence with familiarity.

My local AS support group has an article about this making reference to a university professor and a sweet old lady who left school at the age of 14 using buses.

Not sure whether to feel dumb or proud! Lol

Plenty of free IQ tests available online, to give you confidence.  Here's one.   http://www.free-iqtest.net

I feel that I am smart and intelligent but the others out there don't see it... and I haven't been given the right opportunities to prove it.

I do not know how to apply it.

testify brother testify

I think that intelligence is multidimensional and it is also linked in with child development. When I was in reception class I was considered talented because I could read complete lines of text and do maths taught to Y2 children but at the same time I couldn't ride a bike without stabiliser wheels and had difficulty interacting with other children in the playground. A classmate who was about two months older than me could ride a bike without stabiliser wheels on the day he started reception class and interacted well with other children in the playground but he was still reading flashcards and couldn't add two single figure numbers together on the last day of reception class. Who was the most intelligent of the two and why?

My classmate had extra help and support with reading and maths in every year he was at primary school but I never had any help and support with bike riding or social skills for the playground.

Schools and much of society have fallen into a trap that intelligence is one-dimensional and limited to academic subjects.

BTW...slightly perturbed by the infographic...I seem happy to sit on the "right" side of the infographic...not sure if there is any logic to the ordering of the types...as it is certainly not alphabetic...? seems a divide of mental and physical/social?

Well... I hope it’s relaxed any existential angst! :) 

Blade said:

I know I still have that intelligent mind - I get to hear it every moment of every day - but it's locked away and nobody else can tell it's there. I've always described it as a wall or a bubble - it's all inside, very little of it actually gets out.

As a result I've found it so hard to see how non-verbal autistic people are often treated by NT adults. I know how it feels to have an intelligent mind locked away, and for them the issue is an even bigger one as they haven't got any voice at all.

Spot on 

Thanks. I wasn't looking forward to typing all that. The book I used gave all of them apart from existential for some reason.

I have something else I am going to post but it will have to wait until I have more time, maybe this afternoon.

The other thing that occurred to me last night and which I am surprised nobody has posted is that there is not just one sort of intelligence.

I was writing a covering letter for a placement I was hoping to do last year - it never came off but that is a different story - and I used two library books to help me.

In one of the books it listed as many as 8 or 9 (?) different types of intelligence - emotional intelligence was one of them but I can't remember the rest of them. The book made the point that all of the different types of intelligence were equally valid and no-one was likely to be strong in more than 3 or 4 of the different types.

I am going to try to find the covering letter and see if I can find the books I was using - my library might be able to help if I ask them nicely.

indeed, i use to be the best in school but then as high school rolled around i started to not be as good as i was and seemingly worse. i saw people easily do work that i had a difficult time on and that hit me.