Saturday, February 25, 2006

Intelligence of People with Autism Underestimated

A Candian researcher at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in St. Louis, MO says that the wrong scale is being used to measure intelligence in people with autism.

"The Wechsler scale is one of the most widely used ways of measuring autistic intelligence. People diagnosed with the disorder typically score very low on the verbal comprehension part of the test.
But research by Dr Laurent Mottron, from the University of Montreal, and colleagues found overall that autistic subjects performed much better on a different test called Raven's Progressive Matrices, with some mute autistics performing exceptionally well. "

He also adds:
"Data on autistic intelligence was often gathered during childhood, at about four or five years of age. This was well short of the age when autistics reached their maximum intellectual potential."

Please also note:
"Dr Laurent Mottron draws a distinction between people with "autistic spectrum" disorders - those with normal or above average intelligence - and those with "real autism", which he says is characterised by mental impairment. "

Full article here.

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