Visual Perception and IQ
An autism-typical strength in perceptual reasoning (Dawson et al., 2007) especially applies to A-SOD (Nader, Jelenic, & Soulières, 2015; Soulières et al., 2011) and autistics with lower verbal comprehension (Nader et al., 2015; Soulières et al., 2011; Bölte, Dziobek & Poustka, 2009). IQ tests like the Weschler heavily require language and prior learning. The Raven’s Progressive Matrices IQ test, however, only uses problem-solving with visual geometric designs. A-NoSOD (Hayashi et al., 2008) and particularly A-SOD (Nader et al., 2015; Soulières et al., 2011) have earned Raven’s scores that match their Weschler peak performance, and that outperform non-autistic peers with comparable Weschler scores (Chen, Planche, & Lemonnier, 2010). Compared with typical adults, A-SOD have faster visual-spatial (Sahyoun et al., 2009) and general processing speed (Barbeau et al., 2013), whereas A-NoSOD have the slowest processing speed (Bucaille et al., 2016). Therefore, IQ tests that emphasize verbal abilities and deemphasize visual-spatial skills may underestimate autistic people’s intelligence, particularly A-SOD, necessitating strength-informed and flexible testing (see Recommendations: IQ).