Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion "Child Genius and Autism Connected"

Yeah--there's a theory (I'm not sure how much credence it still has) that part of the rise in ASDs has to do with the increasing value of ASD-ish skills (think IT) to society. Thus, these people have income and cluster together and marry and reproduce. I read a long article in Wired about it once.

However, it seems to me that we keep finding out more potential causes for ASD. Age of father is a big new one, right?

In my own family, we absolutely see unusual, prodigy-like skills combined with ASD-type personalities. AFAIK, only one person was ever diagnosed. One person should have been, according to all who knew him, but he was also a literal mathematical genius who would be well known to anyone with a serious mathematical background.

Funny thing, I went to the Autism-Spectrum Quotient quiz at Wired that was used for that study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aqtest.html

Did my own thumbnail analysis of the content and came up with these categories of questions versus personality:
(50 total questions)
3 Distinctly ASD
6 Related to creative (scored for negative)
4 Detail-oriented
13 Empathy related (scored for negative)
15 Fairly classical gifted traits
9 Introverted
(YAMV)

It's a lot like the MMPI: you can draw nothing realistic from middle high score tendencies, but can only really look at the scores that cross into the diagnostic range.

I don't think I've seen that particular quiz before. I scored very low (7). I took it "as" my DD, scoring everything as high as possible on questions that would give her ASD "points," (So I inflated a bit) and got a 27. That's completely typical of every such (obviously nonprofessional) test/quiz I've ever taken for her. Gray area.

The specialist in women and girls with Aspergers that we have been consulting actually uses that test as a pre-screener in the paperwork she sends out prior to a first appointment (NOT a diagnostic tool). She obviously thinks it's somewhat useful.

I scored 32 ... I certainly displayed a lot of aspergerish traits when I was younger and still do ... now, the question is ... was it because I had/have asperger's ... or because I was gifted? lol

Interesting, MumofThree. I noticed that they didn't have anything sensory on that one, which seemed like a big omission to me. (My own score seems too low to me; I definitely have more than a touch of SPD.)

DD doesn't check any of the boxes for ASD regarding social stuff and pretend play on that one. She's even the other direction. However, detail-oriented? Blunt? Absolutely.

Can I remember details, strings of numbers? Nope.

Sometimes I don't realize that the forest has any trees.

Ultramarina - I was thinking about this after I posted and I am pretty sure that the screener the psychologist used was 95% identical, but I do think it did not have at least one of these questions and may have had one or two extras. I will try to find time to compare the two. But I wonder if she is using a slightly updated/modified version?

Oh, this just makes me laugh and sigh:

"A further research paper indicated that the questionnaire could be used for screening in clinical practice, with scores less than 26 indicating that a diagnosis of Asperger syndrome can effectively be ruled out."

(Wikipedia)

Again, I scored DD at...27. (I intentionally scored "up" a bit, answering "strongly agree" or "strongly disagree" in some instances when it was more like like "agree"--they don't have that option on this one).

Looks like this may be the child version: http://autismresearchcenter.com/docs/papers/2008_Auyeung_etal_ChildAQ.pdf


ETA: this link is better:

http://www.autismresearchcentre.com/arc_tests

I get a 58 for DD on the child version, interestingly--significantly higher than average for typically developing girls, but well below the diagnostic cut-off of 76.