[Redway]

Originally Posted by Soldier Boy

I think there's often just a failure to realise that there are different aspects of what makes a person intelligent. People with ASD can tend to lack some (typical) social skills and that can lead to struggles with emotional intelligence and there are sometimes some communciation and language issues. On the other hand, ASD people tend to be quite systematic thinkers and will also have had to find "workarounds" for things that come naturally to non-ASD people (often called "masking") and those combined can lead to well-above-average improvisation and problem solving skills.

On a basic level that really applies to everyone I suppose; a brilliant author can be borderline innumerate, and vice versa extremely talented technically minded people can struggle with language nuances.

A good friend of mine at school for example was offered an accelerated start (skipping 1st year) at University for Computer Science, but needed Higher English. His grades for CompSci, Maths, Physics etc were off the charts but they had a basic requirement of at least a pass in English. He failed it miserably on his first try, I managed to coach him to scraping a C on his second attempt. Extremely intelligent guy, not on the spectrum (or at least not apparently), he just straight up couldn't do it .

That’s all true but on the other hand a lot of people with things like Asperger’s and dyspraxia have very high verbal IQs (and much lower performance IQs) and actually do particularly well in the languages. Hyperlexia (extreme opposite of dyslexia) is common in Aspies and again it’s almost because of their particular type of Asperger’s, not in spite of it.