Helen, an 11-year-old girl with autism, goes to mainstream school and does very well at all the subjects. But no one at school has ever...

Gilles de la Tourette syndrome or Tourette syndrome (TS) is a neurological disorder characterized by sudden, brief, repetitive,...

A splinter skill or a learning style? One morning (not the best time for me – getting ready for my work), my autistic son (who had...

The Flynn effect – named after Professor James Flynn of the University of Otago in New Zealand – refers to a phenomenon of rising IQ...

It is not straightforward Despite differences in approaches to define ‘intelligence ’, most experts agree that intelligence is the capacity to learn, think logically about abstract concepts and the ability to adapt to the cultural environment . Functional and intellectual disability Donna Williams (1996) distinguishes between functional and intellectual disability. The first one is to do with how a person functions in the world based on the capacity to act on the informat

Big world people [non-autistics] can be considered idiots in the autistic world, too, just as it can be the other way round. (Jasmine O’Neill) What we really measure with IQ tests of autistic people is how well a person can function (or even communicate his/her functioning) in a different perceptual/ cognitive/ linguistic/ social world using perceptual / cognitive / language systems available to him (but unidentified by the test). Different forms of intelligence The phenomeno

What do we measure with IQ tests? Measuring non-autistic people by [the autistic] type of development would often find them failing miserably and appearing to be thoroughly ‘subnormal’ by ‘autistic’ standards. (Donna Williams) Before we can discuss IQ tests and the way they are used with autistic population, we have to define what intelligence is. What is intelligence? And here we have a problem: there is no single definition of intelligence that has been universally accepted

Insisting on ‘Look at me when I’m talking to you’ vs. Talking to the wall Some autistic children need an intensive interaction style that...

‘Do you want eye contact or a conversation?’ This was the question asked by someone with Asperger syndrome when he was approached with...