Here are two articles, both from Science Daily, describing research that demonstrates how poorly standardized tests predict academic ability in kids with autism and Aspergers.  

 IQ Scores Fail to Predict Academic Performance in Children With Autism

New data show that many children with autism spectrum disorders have greater academic abilities than previously thought. In a study by researchers at the University of Washington, 90 percent of high-functioning children with autism spectrum disorders showed a discrepancy between their IQ score and their performance on reading, spelling and math tests.

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 Little is known about how these children actually perform in regular classrooms, which has implications for how to assign support services. Since IQ scores in the general population reliably predict academic performance — as measured by standardized tests for word reading, spelling and basic number skills — Estes and her colleagues thought the same would be true in their sample of 30 high-functioning 9 year olds with autism spectrum disorders.

“What we found was astounding: 27 out of the 30 children — that’s 90 percent — had discrepancies between their IQ score and scores on at least one of the academic achievement tests,” Estes said. “Some scored higher and some scored lower than what their IQ score would predict.”

To the researchers’ surprise, 18 of the 30 children tested higher than predicted on at least one of the academic tests. This was especially true for spelling and word reading. Across the three academic tests, 18 of the 30 children scored lower than what their IQs would predict, suggesting a learning disability.”

 These findings shouldn’t be so surprising, given how dependent IQ tests are on receptive and expressive language and, no matter what inter-rater reliability claims can be made, on a positive rapport between tester and student. 

The researchers also didn’t compare IQ and achievement test scores with actual school participation or performance, which would provide a valuable dimension to this picture, especially since they noted a positive correlation between social skills and academic performance. Shared or joint attention is a foundation for both social interactions and the ability to learn implicitly through observation of others.

Read the whole article here. 

Level and Nature of Autistic Intelligence: What About Asperger Syndrome?

(…) Both autistic and Asperger individuals display uneven profiles of performance in commonly used intelligence test batteries such as Wechsler scales, and their strongest performances are often considered evidence for deficits.

However, this study reports that Asperger individuals’ scores are much higher when they are evaluated by a test called Raven’s Progressive Matrices, which encompasses reasoning, novel problem-solving abilities, and high-level abstraction. By comparison, scores for non-Asperger individuals are much more consistent across different tests. Interestingly, Asperger participants’ performance on Raven’s Matrices was associated with their strongest peaks of performance on Wechsler.

(…) 

According to co-author Michelle Dawson, “while we know autistics process information atypically, very little thought has gone into how to fairly assess their abilities. In fact there is so little understanding of what autistics do well that their strong abilities are often regarded as dysfunctional. Here we have again found that measurable strengths in autistic spectrum individuals are not “isolated islets of abilities” as previously thought, but are in fact representative of autistics’ intellectual abilities. This in turn raises questions about how we can provide autistics with the kinds of information they can process well, as we do with non-autistic individuals. We consider the effort to understand and encourage autistic strengths to be of paramount importance. “

Based on these results, the authors emphasize that autistic spectrum intelligence is atypical, but also genuine, general, and underestimated.

Again, these findings should not be so surprising, but really highlight the need to look at the individual differences of each child (i.e. unique strengths and challenges) rather than trying to create a better academic mold in which to stuff all children.    

Read more here. 

From Science Daily: 

Linguists and psychologists have debated how much the parts of the brain that mediate direct sensory experience are involved in understanding metaphors. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, in their landmark work ‘Metaphors we live by’, pointed out that our daily language is full of metaphors, some of which are so familiar (like “rough day”) that they may not seem especially novel or striking. They argued that metaphor comprehension is grounded in our sensory and motor experiences.

New brain imaging research reveals that a region of the brain important for sensing texture through touch, the parietal operculum, is also activated when someone listens to a sentence with a textural metaphor. The same region is not activated when a similar sentence expressing the meaning of the metaphor is heard.

Embodied cognition strikes again! I find this interesting, as it is commonly believed that individuals with autism and Asperger’s have difficulty processing metaphors. Could we trace this, too, back to a lack of effective connectivity between the senses? For those individuals who lack a rich and nuanced sensory database for the visual, auditory, and tactile senses associated with a label, such as “rough,” is it any wonder that the word might lack in rich and nuanced meaning?

Read the full article here.  

Edited to clarify, with apologies: it is certainly not my intention to over-generalize. In my experience, there are as many variations of autism as there are individuals who have the diagnosis. There, are, however, some patterns of differences that cause significant functional challenges, confusion, and frustration for the children I work with. This research sparked my interest and caused me to speculate about receptive processing of language and a possible connection to sensory integration because it would suggest an alternative to the typical rote method of teaching.