Editor's note:: I think the autistic boy's question was right on!

The Hidden Potential of Autistic Kids
What intelligence tests might be overlooking when it comes to autism

"perhaps autism is not really a disease at all—that it
is perhaps just a different way of looking at the world that should be
celebrated rather than viewed as pathology."


By Rose Eveleth  | November 30, 2011 | 46

When I was in fifth grade, my brother Alex started correcting my
homework. This would not have been weird, except that he was in
kindergarten—and autistic. His disorder, characterized by repetitive
behaviors and difficulty with social interactions and communication,
made it hard for him to listen to his teachers. He was often kicked
out of class for not being able to sit for more than a few seconds at
a time. Even now, almost 15 years later, he can still barely scratch
out his name. But he could look at my page of neatly written words or
math problems and pick out which ones were wrong.

Many researchers are starting to rethink how much we really know about
autistic people and their abilities. These researchers are coming to
the conclusion that we might be underestimating what they are capable
of contributing to society. Autism is a spectrum disease with two very
different ends. At one extreme are “high functioning” people who often
hold jobs and keep friends and can get along well in the world. At the
other, "low functioning" side are people who cannot operate on their
own. Many of them are diagnosed with mental retardation and have to be
kept under constant care. But these diagnoses focus on what autistic
people cannot do. Now a growing number of scientists are turning that
around to look at what autistic people are good at.

Researchers have long considered the majority of those affected by
autism to be mentally retarded. Although the numbers cited vary, they
generally fall between 70 to 80 percent of the affected population.
But when Meredyth Edelson, a researcher at Willamette University, went
looking for the source of those statistics, she was surprised that she
could not find anything conclusive. Many of the conclusions were based
on intelligence tests that tend to overestimate disability in autistic
people. "Our knowledge is based on pretty bad data," she says.

This hidden potential was recently acknowledged by Laurent Mottron, a
psychiatrist at the University of Montreal. In an article in the
November 3 issue of Nature, he recounts his own experience working
with high-functioning autistic people in his lab, which showed him the
power of the autistic brain rather than its limitations. Mottron
concludes that  perhaps  autism is not really a disease at all—that it
is perhaps just a different way of looking at the world that should be
celebrated rather than viewed as pathology.

Having grown up with two autistic brothers—Alex, four years younger
than I, and Decker, who is eight years younger—Mottron's conclusion
rings true. As I watched them move through the public schools, it
became very clear that there was a big difference between what
teachers expected of them and what they could do. Of course, their
autism hindered them in some ways—which often made school difficult—
yet it also seemed to give them fresh and useful ways of seeing the
world—which often don't show up in the standard intelligence tests.

That is because testing for intelligence in autistic people is hard.
The average person can sit down and take a verbally administered,
timed test without too many problems. But for an autistic person with
limited language capability, who might be easily distracted by sensory
information, this task is very hard. The most commonly administered
intelligence test, the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC)
almost seems designed to flunk an autistic person: it is a completely
verbal, timed test that relies heavily on cultural and social
knowledge. It asks questions like "What is the thing to do if you find
an envelope in the street that is sealed, addressed and has a new
stamp on it?" and "What is the thing to do when you cut your finger?"



This year Decker was kicked out of a test much like WISC. Every three
years, as he moves through the public school system, his progress is
re-evaluated as a part of his Individualized Education Plan—a set of
guidelines designed to help people with disabilities reach their
educational goal.

This year, as part of the test, the woman delivering the questions
asked him, "You find out someone is getting married. What is an
appropriate question to ask them?"

My brother's answer: "What kind of cake are you having?"

The proctor shook her head. No, she said, that's not a correct answer.
Try again. He furrowed his brow in the way we have all learned to be
wary of—it is the face that happens before he starts to shut down—and
said, "I don't have another question. That's what I would ask." And
that was that. He would not provide her another question, and she
would not move on without one. He failed that question and never
finished the test.

A test does not have to be like this. Other measures, like Raven's
Progressive Matrices or the Test of Nonverbal Intelligence (TONI),
avoid these behavioral and language difficulties. They ask children to
complete designs and patterns, with mostly nonverbal instructions. And
yet they often are not used.



The average child will score around the same percentile for all these
tests, both verbal and nonverbal. But an autistic child will not.
Isabelle Soulieres, a researcher at Harvard University, gave a group
of autistics both WISC and the Raven test to measure the difference
between the two groups. Although she expected a difference, she was
surprised at just how big the gap was. On average, autistic students
performed 30 percentile points better on the Raven test than on WISC.
Some kids jumped 70 percentile points. "Depending on which test you
use, you get a very different picture of the potential of the kids,"
she says. Other studies have confirmed this gap, although they found a
smaller jump between tests.

The “high functioning” autistic children, with the least severe
version of the disability, were not the only ones to score higher.
Soulieres conducted a study recently at a school for autistic children
considered intellectually disabled. Using the Raven test, she found
that about half of them scored in the average range for the general
population. "Many of those who are considered low-functioning—if you
give them other intelligence tests, you will find hidden potential,"
she says. "They can solve really complex problems if you give them
material that they can optimally process."

What this means, she says, is that schools are underestimating the
abilities of autistic children all across the spectrum. The widespread
use of the WISC in schools has helped set expectations of autistic
kids too low—assuming that they will not be able to learn the same
things that the average child can. Based on the test results, people
come to the conclusion that autistic children cannot learn, when
perhaps they do not learn the same way other people do.

The hidden potential of autistic people seems to fall in common
areas—tasks that involve pattern recognition, logical reasoning and
picking out irregularities in data or arguments. Soulieres describes
working with an autistic woman in her lab who can pick out the
slightest flaws in logic. "At first, we argue with her," Soulieres
laughs, "but almost each time, she's right, and we're wrong."

Recognizing these talents, rather than pushing them aside to focus on
the drawbacks of autism, could benefit not just autistic people, but
everyone else as well. Mottron chronicles how much better his science
got by working with his autistic lab partner. I got far higher marks
on my homework than I would have without Alex, even though his
corrections were sometimes infuriating. And many think their potential
extends beyond science to all professions, if given the right chances.

Just because a test says someone has potential, that does not mean it
is easy to realize. My brother Decker’s teachers are convinced—and the
tests confirm—that he has hidden potential. But in class, he often
falls behind when trying to listen to instructions and gets frustrated
when trying to catch up. "It doesn't mean that it's easy for them in
everyday life, or that it's easy for their parents or teachers,"
Soulieres says. "But it shows that they have this reasoning potential,
and maybe we have to start teaching them differently and stop making
the assumption that they won't learn."

More and more people are starting to wonder what gems might lie hidden
in the autistic brain. And if my brothers are any indication, if we
keep looking, we will find them.

 Article submitted by Mary-Minn Sirag