Letters from the September 15, 2007, issue of Science News
By Science News
Talk talk talk
“Hidden Smarts: Abstract thought trumps IQ scores in autism” (SN: 7/7/07, p. 4) didn’t mention that traditional IQ tests are in one sense “language” tests. The Ravens test doesn’t involve language processing in a typical manner. A person with a language disorder, as an autistic person is assumed to be, would do better on a nonverbal test. That the intelligence of autistic people can be underestimated is really due to the fact that our culture assumes that language skill equals intelligence.