Hockenbury Discovering Psychology 5th txtbk

The Nature of Intelligence303communication, an appropriate instrument for measuringintelligence in autistic children?To address this question, Michelle Dawson and her colleagues(2007) used the Raven’s Progressive Matrices Test to measureintelligence in autistic children and adults (see sample items).A nonverbal test of logic and higher-level abstract thinking, thetest was developed by John Raven, one of Spearman’s students.Because the test does not rely upon previously learned information,many cognitive psychologists regard it as an especiallypure test of Spearman’s g factor (Holyoak, 2005).In Dawson’s study, children and adults with autism took boththe Wechsler and the Raven’s tests. How did they do? On average,the autistic children scored at the 26th percentile on theWechsler—a score that would label them as mentally retarded orlow-functioning and well below an average score of 50 percent.In contrast, their average score on the Raven’s was 56 percent,fully 30 percentile points higher, a difference that moved manychildren from the low-functioning or mentally retarded range tothe normal range. A similar pattern was found in autistic adults.Did non-autistic subjects also show a big difference in scoreson the Wechsler versus the Raven’s? No. Members of thenon-autistic control groups received very similar scores on theWechsler and Raven’s tests (see graph).Many autistics affirm that it would be impossible tosegregate the part of them that is autistic. To takeaway their autism is to take away their personhood. . . Like their predecessors in human rights, manyautistics don't want to be cured; they want to be accepted.And like other predecessors in civil rights, manyautistics don’t want to be required to imitate themajority just to earn their rightful place in society.MORTON ANN GERNSBACHER, 2004or “uneducable”? As Laurent Mottron (2006) points out, “If weclassify children as intellectually deficient, then that is how theywill be treated. They will be denied a host of opportunities.”Today, many researchers, parents, and people “on the spectrum”are embracing a new approach to spectrum disorders.Called neurodiversity, it is the recognition that people with autisticspectrum symptoms process information, communicate, andexperience their social and physical environment differently thanneurotypical people who don’t have autistic symptoms. Ratherthan viewing autism as a disorder or disease, advocates of thisviewpoint believe that it should be viewed as a disability, likedeafness, or a difference, like left-handedness (see Trivedi,2005).Neurodiversity advocates do not deny that autistic peopleneed special training and support (Baron-Cohen, 2000, 2005).Autism rights activists Amy Roberts and Gareth Nelson (2005)suggest that rather than trying to “cure” autistics and make themmore like non-autistic people, researchers should emphasizegiving autistic children and adults the tools that they need to survivein a world that is designed for non-autistic people.Disorder, disease, disability, or difference? We’ll give notedautism researcher Simon Baron-Cohen (2007) the last word:Autism is both a disability and a difference. We need to find waysof alleviating the disability while respecting and valuing the difference.There’s an interesting twist to this story. The lead author,Michelle Dawson, who planned the study, handled the data collection,supervised the statistical analysis, and wrote the firstdraft, is herself autistic. Dawson can’t cook, drive, take publictransportation, or handle many other everyday tasks. However,Dawson has a phenomenal memory and a razor-sharp logicalmind. According to her co-researcher, University of Montrealpsychiatrist Laurent Mottron (2008), Dawson also has a remarkablegift for scientific analysis.It was Dawson who came up with the idea for the study(Gernsbacher, 2007, April). As Dawson (2007) observes, testingautistic kids’ intelligence in a way that requires them to verballyinteract with a stranger “is like giving a blind person an intelligencetest that requires him to process visual information.” Onintelligence tests, the assumption has always been that whensomeone doesn’t answer a question, it’s because they don’tknow the answer. But there is another possibility: Perhaps theysimply can’t express what they know (Gernsbacher, 2004;Gernsbacher & others, 2007).Why are such findings so important? Well, what happens to childrenwho are labeled as “mentally retarded,” “low-functioning,”Michelle Dawson Michelle Dawson readily admits that copingwith many everyday challenges is beyond her. Yet, according toher colleague Laurent Mottron (2008), “Michelle is someone whowill change the way an entire sector of humanity is considered.”Dawson met neuroscientist and autism researcher Mottron whenthey both appeared on a documentary about autism. RecognizingDawson’s intelligence, Mottron asked her to read some ofhis scientific papers. When she responded with an insightfulcritique of his methodology, Mottron took her on as a researchcollaborator. Since that time, Dawson has co-authored severalpapers with Mottron and other scientists, including MortonAnn Gernsbacher, former president of the Association forPsychological Science.