Oh, and the author of the original wince-inducing article has written the second part...

[conuly]

In which she describes Rain Man as a movie about a man with Asperger's. No, Rain Man was about somebody diagnosed as HFA. Whether or not this distinction is valid is an exercise left up to the reader, but please, let's stop saying "hey, they can talk, they must be aspie".

And this article, where the number of autistics with average or above average intelligence (whatever that means) is a paltry 10 - 15%. That can't be right....

Comments

[leora.livejournal.com]

No, that's not quite it either.

The point is that IQ tests have worked consistently well at identifying students who will have problems in school. However, they have numerous inadequacies when used to measure intelligence. They actually tend to do a fairly decent job for most people and if you pick a random sample of people measured as 135 and compare them to a sample of measure measured at 85, you'll generally agree that people with a 135 IQ seem to have that intangible quality of intelligence moreso than those measured at 85.

However, when the test is used to say this is how intelligent someone is, a bunch of problems crop up that do not occur when it is simply used to find which students are likely to have problems in school. Basically, the test makes certain assumptions about the test taker, and if the test taker violates these assumptions, you can get results that are far lower than people might think reasonable just by getting to know the person.

This means that IQ tests have to be used carefully, the results not taken quite too seriously (although an unusually high result will either have meaning or involve someone finding a way to cheat or the test giver totally messing up something), and the test should be given by a well-trained test giver. The last step is often missing. And it still doesn't fully account for the test taker having motives other than to get the answers right.

So, it's not a horrible test, and they have worked hard to make it less culturally biased (I'm sure there is more work to be done there, though), but like all tests, it's not a perfect tool. I bring it up especially in the case of autism, because I feel this is a group more likely to violate the assumptions of the test and thus get less accurate results.