Non-verbal Autism and Intelligence – some myths debunked

The idea that non-verbal autistics have low IQ in general and are unaware of their surroundings is a myth that has to be debunked.

Consider Amanda Baggs, featured in the article “The Truth About Autism: Scientists Reconsider What They Think They Know” by David Wolman in the March 2008 issue of Wired Magazine.

The 27-year-old Amanda Baggs is autistic and “non-verbal” – she cannot speak, but that does not mean she does not communicate. If it wasn’t for technology, nobody would know what she’s thinking, how she’s feeling, and, quite frankly, that she’s a pretty amazing person. Luckily, she can communicate through the DynaVox VMax computer and through her very powerful YouTube videos and her blog Ballastexistenz, has become an advocate for human rights for the disabled and for the acceptance of people like her.

(As a sidenote, I have linked to the “About” page on Amanda Baggs’ blog because that’s where she explains the title of the blog and refers to the “German eugenics movement against disabled people — which, for reference, predated Nazism” and “was heavily influenced by American ideas.” By the way, Stephen Murdoch, the author of IQ: A Smart History of a Failed Idea also wrote about the eugenics movement in his book.)

Baggs’s “In My Language” video, “is a statement about what gets considered thought, intelligence, personhood, language, and communication, and what does not.” I hope you’ll watch it.

David Wolman’s piece also mentions an article by Michelle Dawson, Isabelle Soulières, Morton Ann Gernsbacher, and Laurent Mottron, titled “The Level and Nature of Autistic Intelligence” published in the August 2007 issue of the Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, published by Blackwell Publishing.

You can’t see the full text of the article unless you are a member of the Association for Psychological Science or have a subscription to the journal, but you can see the abstract.

The first author of the article, Michelle Dawson, is autistic as well. In her blog entry about the article being accepted for publication she writes “there should be a lot more caution than is currently the case, when making assumptions about what autistics can or can’t do. Some serious rethinking is necessary, about intelligence in autism and possibly intelligence in general.”

Current APS President, Morton Ann Gernsbacher, the Vilas Research Professor and Sir Frederic C. Bartlett Professor of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a co-author of “The Level and Nature of Autistic Intelligence” wrote for the April 2007 issue of the Observer (also published by the APS) an article titled “The True Meaning of Research Participation” which is worth reading as well.