Got a Problem With That?

by Kristina Chew · 2009-06-17 14:35:00 UTC
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Thinker statue above enlarged circuit board from http://artificial-thinking.org/images/artificial_thinker.jpg
Individuals on the autism spectrum "perform more proficiently" on Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices (RSPM) than would be predicted by their Wechsler intelligence scores according to a new study published in the journal Human Brain Mapping. The RSPM "assays abilities to flexibly infer rules, manage goal hierarchies, and perform high-level abstractions"; it focuses on hypothesis-testing, problem-solving and learning skills. (A number of articles have been reporting on the study under a slightly over-simplified title of "Autistics Better at Problem-Solving.)

Fifteen autistic and eighteen non-autistic participants completed 60 self-paced randomly-ordered RSPM items along with a visually similar 60-item pattern matching comparison task. Both groups performed with equal accuracy, but the autistic group did so more quickly and "'appeared to use perceptual regions of the brain to accelerate problem-solving,'" according to lead author Isabelle Soulières, a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University who completed the experiment at the Université de Montréal.

In today's MedLexicon, Soulières also noted that

"Some critics agued that autistics would be unable to complete the RSPM because of its complexity, yet our study shows autistics complete it as efficiently and have a more highly developed perception than non-autistics."

Intelligence testing has always been a tricky area for my son. For one thing, his verbal ability is limited and he doesn't read and his academics are far below that of his grade level (6th grade). I'm not really sure if any test could capture his intelligence.

But he's got a strong memory for places, notes patterns quickly, and definitely understands a lot more than he seems too.

Now if we could just get everyone to understand that.

Kristina Chew
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