r/aspergers • u/Tiny_District6687 • 21h ago
I don’t believe my evaluators were being honest about my intelligence
I asked them multiple times what my IQ is and they always said average. But yet I consistently scored below average/low average - average in every category they tested me on, even the ones I was best at.
I know that doesn’t technically count towards your whole IQ. But you can’t tell me I have an average IQ with such low scores, there’s just no way.
I don’t think they were being honest, I think they were lying to try and spare my feelings. But I’ve been respectful towards them this entire time, I don’t see why I can’t just know the truth. Tell me if I’m dumb or not, I can handle it, and I’d like to know.
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u/tealeaf64 19h ago
If someone has a very 'spikey profile' (which means there are very large differences in your scores on different areas of intelligence) then the FSIQ (full scale IQ) is considered invalid and a different metric might be used to estimate intelligence which only looks at certain subscores. That might be what happened with you? It is very common for autistic people to have spikey cognitive profiles.
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u/Embarrassed-One1227 7h ago
Yup. In fact an experienced expert can look at those spikes and make a solid guess as to whether the test taker is ND and in what ways.
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u/Wonderful-Deer-7934 21h ago
IQ tests aren't always accurate and ultimately if they were still in the average range, then you are still of average IQ. I had a couple aspects of the test score above average, but hardly -- so overall it is still average.
However, if it was significantly below average, then that is frustrating that they weren't being straight forward.
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u/stormdelta 16h ago
And "accuracy" is a bit of a loaded term here in the first place - what we call intelligence clearly has multiple forms, some very different from each other, and IQ tests have been criticized quite a bit as portraying themselves as more general than they actually are.
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u/Unboundone 20h ago
Why exactly don’t you believe them? They have a duty of care and professional teaching and standards. Your own insecurity and self-doubt is taking over.
Believe them, feel good about yourself, and move on.
Dumb people don’t worry about being dumb. If anything they think they are smarter than they are (Dunning-Kruger effect). So the fact that you don’t means that you have at least average intelligence.
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u/Content-Fee-8856 19h ago edited 18h ago
The Dunning-Kruger effect concerns skills in specific tasks, not general intelligence. People with superior intelligence could be less prone to it with some tasks in the way that they can recover more readily because they are more sensitive to error, but they are still not immune. It's a cognitive bias that affects people across the board. It's impossible to always know everything you don't know even if you possess genius-grade intelligence.
What actually happens is that highly intelligent people can tend to employ more sophisticated strategies for being stupid before they (hopefully) correct their course. Lol.
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u/Embarrassed-One1227 7h ago
Let's dump the Dunning-Kruger label and just say that it takes some intelligence to be able to doubt oneself.
And also that a lot of young people with high IQs often don't see themselves as smart. They see themselves as having only normal intelligence, and they're often wondering what the heck is wrong with their peers... I'm referring mainly to those below 14 to 16, before one is able to start to form a stable, mature perception of themselves and the world.
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u/eightmarshmallows 20h ago
Average on an IQ scale is the middle of the bell curve, so it straddles the median on both sides. So you can score below the median, and still fall in the range of what is considered average.
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u/Content-Fee-8856 19h ago edited 19h ago
It's very unlikely that they were trying to protect your feelings, the test results are a "ball park" estimate, so they will just report what "bucket" you fall into. A lot of incidental factors contribute to test-to-test variability such as when the test is taken in the day, what you ate that morning, how you slept, etc etc. Factors such as what and how many languages you speak, what your primary language is, where you grew up also potentially make the test less effective.
A person can only take an inventory for the first time once (testing too much too soon will artificially inflate the score because test-taking is a skill-set that people improve at) so the result is taken as somewhat imprecise given this fact and the aforementioned confounding factors.
Essentially, if the results aren't extreme enough to place you outside the margin of error for a bucket, you are in that bucket. In this case, that is average intelligence.
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u/Sarastuskavija 20h ago
So in clinical environments medical staff won't lie to you to "spare your feelings." They, for one, do not care that much, and two, you're just another patient being evaluated. I'm not trying to be mean, but there's literally no reason they would lie to you. That's incredibly silly
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u/AdonisGaming93 20h ago
Well....you might think so but judging from the idiotic comments I see on social medoa from people low scores might be the average.
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u/PossibilityFeeling47 19h ago
Tests don't measure everything or even accurately and I think evaluators have some room for judgement.
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u/Only_Swimming57 18h ago
Sounds like you are in the lower range of average, but it still counts as average.
Small tips:
-Limit multi tasking, focus on one task at a time to enhance concentration and efficiency.
-Make it priority to get a quality sleep
-Stay physically active
-Break tasks and problems into smaller steps
-Create a good habits such as reading a book now and then, going for a run and etc
-Indetify what type of a learner you are and use existing tools to aid you with learning
-Identify what triggers your autism and create an autism friendly environment for yourself
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u/Agitated_Budgets 16h ago
IQ tests vary even just by examiner preference. Especially depending on what kind you take.
I know when I was scored there was information known testing, problem solving testing, and speed of processing testing. Probably a few more things too I didn't notice.
I was high IQ but very lopsided. My processing speed for image puzzles was terrible. So much so they pointed it out proactively. My processing speed for verbal problems was immediate, so unusual they also pointed that out.
IQ tests that break things into categories are more useful. Finding out where you're exceptional and weak may help explain why you feel weak a lot of the time but get an average. There can be some outlier aspects of intelligence that bring you up and are your strengths. Maybe you're a 102 overall. But that's because you're a 95 at math and processing speed related to most normal schoolwork. But you have a 115 in a specific category drawing you back upwards.
A good testing service or psych eval, depending on why you took one, will explain your results to you. Mine did and let me ask questions and get a printout of their summary of results.
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u/Embarrassed-One1227 7h ago
Hey I was lopsided in the same way! Then I had to learn technical drawing (the engineering kind, OMG) and it got a lot better. IQs get higher with practice, whoever would've thought LOL /s
There's this very interesting thing that can be done though. An occupational therapist showed me. On one side of a piece of lined paper, he drew a bunch of random lines that looked like half of a spider web/frog/whatever your imagination fancies that day. Then you take only a straight edge and a pencil, and complete the image in mirror form. That actually helped me in very strong but subtle ways when I had to do technical drawings by hand. Somehow I was able to close my eyes, lie down with a blanket over my head, and eventually visualise everything I wanted to put on paper. And then carefully do that.
I loved the feeling I had the first time I managed that. Satisfaction incarnate.
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u/Agitated_Budgets 6h ago
I'm not sure that would work for me. I can't imagine images. But who knows.
My art skills are terrible though.
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u/Embarrassed-One1227 6h ago edited 6h ago
An art teacher once told me I should paste my work on the front door to ward off demons. LOL. But with some help from a friend who's a BFA graduate, and a schoolmate who has an MFA, and also a ton of practice on my own (and discipline in technical drawing), I made it to the point where I could draw something of CAD quality.
Books on technical drawing abound. There's this one for example: https://motenv.wordpress.com/2023/09/25/introduction-to-technical-drawing-pdf/
Believe in yourself!
(But proper drafting instruments are a must. Good tools motivate good work. If anything, it's so satisfying to be able to sketch in 3D and pass it to a co worker and say, that's the design I'm thinking of, if everything's good, get the tech guys to turn it into CAD.)
I was >30 yo when I finally managed that. Before that I would look at a pencil and feel like it was mocking me.
Interestingly, I always had very, very good penmanship (or illegible cursive, depending on who u ask). I also write in Chinese characters as often as I do in the Latin alphabet. That may have something to do with it. Who knows...
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u/abc123doraemi 12h ago
Write them and ask for copies of the original evaluation and scoring manual.
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u/aspieincarnation 10h ago
I mean this in the nicest possible way but its very difficult to phrase it without sounding insulting.
If your IQ is truly that low then why would you be more qualified to read the test results than the evaluators?
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u/belialetta 4h ago
My son was given an iq test in school as a part of his evaluation for adhd and autism, and according to the score, his iq is in the low 70s. This is absolutely not even remotely accurate. He is autistic and has severe adhd. His scores were totally off as a result.
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u/Naplessnowbird 1h ago
This is a totally sexist remark, so forgive me. I have known several males who did terrible in high school but went on to get their PhD or pass the CPA exam in one shot. Not backed by science but observation, the male brain doesn't mature until later in life. Test again in your late 20s and then see how you do. On the flip side, my 17 year old son does horrible on standardized tests such as ACT, but he's taking honors level STEM classes in high school and doing very well. Brains mature at different ages.
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u/EarlyOnRigorMortis 20h ago
Yeah. This is because starting in 2012/13 they began “averaging the number” between the test subject EQ and IQ, so it wouldn’t surprise me at all if you ended up with an average score.
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u/Content-Fee-8856 19h ago edited 19h ago
Uh source please? I have a Canadian psych degree from 2017 and I don't remember this being a thing.
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u/Embarrassed-One1227 7h ago
I'm interested in the source too. never heard that was a thing...
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u/EarlyOnRigorMortis 3h ago
I’m afraid I don’t have a listed source. I’m only going by what the psychologist told me when my son was formally tested in 2017. This is the same son they gave an IQ of 116, who the school system had assigned an IQ of 136.
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u/--Thanatos-- 21h ago
A dumb person likely wouldn't think they could be dumb. Are you a bad test taker or have a lot of anxiety while taking tests? I wouldn't judge a person's intelligence strictly from academic things.
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u/osszeg 19h ago
It depends on what IQ test you're talking about. There's lots of variants and some with additional areas of testing. There's not a single "IQ test" that is standard. Most people mean WAIS when they say IQ, but there are loads of others. Does your report break down the areas or say which test it was and if they did any additional or specialized testing?
As others have pointed out, the score isn't dispositive...and intelligence isn't all that's being evaluated. Did you to the finger tapping test where you do several trials of "tap as fast as you can" with both hands? If so, what do you think that has to do with intelligence? Nothing. That's not what's being evaluated. (Pretty much all I'm going to say about that from an ethics standpoint.)
Keep in mind that 100 is always the average (with a standard deviation of 15). And the scales/weights get adjusted regularly. If, for example, you did 120 on WAIS-III then a few years later did 120 on WAIS-IV, you actually improved quite a lot even though your raw score was unchanged. You improved because the WAIS-IV is harder and more rigorous (which tends to adjust DOWN the norms)...and because you're older. (That's the Flynn effect...which I'm vastly oversimplifying.)
There are many ways to evaluate intelligence. IQ tests are just a tool in the toolbox. Every psychometric test has pros and cons. Some are amazing in one are and shit awful in another area.
Let me give you an example: the MMPI-2 exemplifies this. There is/was a derived score on that test called Mf whose original intent was basically to identify gay men (I've over simplified that a lot, but roll with me). It was not successful at doing that, but it was extremely good at finding people with an interest in the arts. It's been outmoded for a long time, just giving you an example. Every test has flaws.
Also, many people are better at testing than others for a variety of factors. Anxiety, the environment, even the proctor.
However, I don't think they would lie to you. I can't see any meaningful purpose for doing that. This is unethical and just isn't done in settings like this where a test is proctored.
You can ask to see the raw scores and validate it for yourself. You won't get any of the questions or explanations of what's being measured in that report, but you can see how you did in straightforward categories like general knowledge. They should have given you a summary that the Psy.D or Ph.D wrote up that gives you the 30,000 foot view and breaks down the general areas of intelligence they're trying to measure.
I don't see them lying to you about it. It would take more work than you can imagine to fudge a proctored test like just to tell a patient their score is X points below average. People also perform differently based on what's going on in their lives, even how well they slept the night before. It can vary because of any prescription medication you're on.
I'm going to take a leap and say you may not test well. There are some special protocols they can take for a neurodivergent test taker (lower lights, more time, alternate subtests, breaks, etc). Did any of those things happen for you? If not, you took the regular WAIS which some researchers have argued actually have a strong bias against neurodivergent individuals being assessed. It's also not clear that the test with special protocols would do much to help abate any of those inherent problems. At the core of the IQ test, as with most psychological tests, is a design by western NTs for western NTs.
TLDR: IQ scores are only useful in proper context, usually alongside a number of other psychometric tests. The IQ score on its own isn't very illuminating.