Autistic Intelligence – Dr. Mottron and Michelle Dawson

Was really happy to find this article, and I’ve posted some of it. It’s something I’ve always suspected about autistic intelligence. Dr. Mottron is professor of psychiatry at the University of Montreal and world-renowned autism researcher at L’Hôpital Rivière des Prairies, which isn’t so far from where I live here in Montreal. Michelle Dawson is an autistic who lives in Montreal, and has written these brilliant essays -  No Autistics Allowed – Explorations in discrimination against autistics, of which my favourite is The Misbehavior of Behaviourists. Ms. Dawson actually emailed me one time to correct something I’d written, and she wasn’t brusque at all in her manner, although I’ve never met her in person. 

Their collaboration is wonderful and I believe will go far to shed some light on autism. It’s so unfortunate that their research findings threaten those who think they have to paint a very bleak picture of autism to convince the government to pay for services.  

The ‘odd couple’ of autism research: Dr Laurent Mottron and Michelle Dawson – Source: Toronto Globe and Mail, February 20, 2006 – found on Autism Connect

“The problem is that autistic intelligence is not measured accurately,” Dr Mottron said.

Simply put, the researchers believe that the standard IQ test — formally known as the Wechsler scales — does not accurately measure the intelligence of autistics. They think a more appropriate measure of intelligence is another accepted test, Raven’s Progressive Matrices.

The principal difference between the Wechsler test depends much more heavily on oral questions, which many autistic people struggle to complete. The Raven test, on the other hand, involves much more abstract reasoning, where people with autism can excel.

While this may appear to be merely an obtuse academic debate about testing methodology, Dr Mottron argues that it has enormous practical implications at a time when as many as one in every 200 children is considered autistic.

“If we classify children as intellectually deficient, then that is how they will be treated. They will be denied a host of opportunities,” he said.

Dr Mottron cites the example of one of the research subjects who scored so poorly on the Wechsler that he was deemed mentally retarded (IQ of less than 70), but on his Raven test he scored in the 94th percentile range — the intelligence level of a university student.

“What do we do with that intelligence? How do we let that person achieve his potential?” he asked.

Ms Dawson says that, traditionally, the abilities of autistic individuals, particularly those of idiot-savants – a classification both researchers dislike – have been dismissed as a meaningless form of intelligence, little more than mechanical trickery.

But all her research has challenged that idea, postulating that there are different forms of intelligence and that tests are skewed toward only one kind.

“It seems to me that intelligence should be about getting things done, not being like other people,” Ms Dawson said.

She points to her fellow researchers as a case in point. “I can’t do what they do with their ‘normal’ brains. But they can’t do what I do with my autistic brain. Does that make me less intelligent?”

The unusual partnership between Dr Mottron and Ms Dawson came about serendipitously, after the two were featured separately in a film about autism — he as the brilliant psychiatrist and she as an autistic woman struggling in the world. (She had just been fired from her job as a letter carrier, the start of a long legal saga and a whole other story.) After seeing the film, Dr Mottron felt pity for Ms Dawson: “I said to myself: ‘If I can’t help this poor woman, I’m useless.’ ”

But Ms Dawson didn’t want his help. Not only that, she dismissed his research and that of others, in particular a paper about how autistics perceive faces, one that was considered seminal at the time.

“Michelle was able to deconstruct and critique a major scientific paper, right down to the methodology. I was amazed,” Dr Mottron said. He asked her to look at his own research, and was again floored by the analysis.

“Because she sees things ‘upside down,’ not in a conventional way, she has caused a paradigm shift in my research,” Dr Mottron said.

In response to her legal battles with Canada Post, Ms Dawson immersed herself in the scientific literature about autism. When he first met her, Dr Mottron was floored by the extent of her knowledge.

He said that Ms Dawson knows the scientific literature as well as anyone, that she is a library in the field of autism and cognitive sciences.

But her inclusion on the research team — because of her legal situation she is an unpaid volunteer — is controversial.

“I put my career in jeopardy, my respectability,” Dr Mottron said. “It was perilous. But her intellectual contribution has been invaluable.”

Dr Mottron estimates that Ms Dawson contributes about 20 per cent of the final published research papers — a significant chunk, particularly for a high-school graduate working alongside PhDs. Her role is principally to critique study design and conclusions. While Ms Dawson’s approach can be unorthodox and her manner brusque (at best), Dr Mottron said scientists tended to be tolerant.