From Gifted to Autistic: A Spectrum of High Intelligence

Understanding the Shared Neurobiology of Giftedness and Autism

Autistic, Gifted, or Both?

If you spend a fair amount of time with people who are gifted or autistic like I do for work, you may notice some commonalities in behaviors and needs. For example, both groups tend to demonstrate:

• Intense interests

• Heightened pattern recognition

• Social communication differences

• Hyper-focus (monotropism)

• Increased ability in specific skill domains (e.g., visuospatial ability, memory, etc.)

• Sensory sensitivity

• Non-linear thinking

Lately, significant attention has been paid to the overlap of autism and giftedness. This may be due to increased cultural attention around rising rates of autism (likely attributable to increased screening, identification, and broadened diagnostic criteria).¹

However, this focus has also increased more rapidly since 2013, when Asperger’s Disorder (often known colloquially as “high-IQ autism” or “high-functioning autism”) was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Asperger’s Disorder is now considered part of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and is commonly referred to as “Level One Autism.” This includes autistic people who have mild support needs, social communication differences, and tend to have average to above average IQ (in contrast, Levels Two and Three demonstrate increased social and cognitive differences).

Greater prevalence and expanded diagnostic criteria for ASD have increased our cultural awareness, and as a result, families I work with often suspect their child has autism before realizing that their child might also be gifted—if they even realize you can be both.

A lot has been said about the positive and negative effects of these diagnostic shifts, but as a result, there is renewed focus on understanding the unique cognitive interplay of autism and giftedness.²

Below, I describe why autism and giftedness are distinct, yet might be considered along a single continuum of high intelligence, given their shared genetic markers, neurobiology, and behavioral presentations.

Autism as a Disorder of Imbalanced Intelligence

People who are gifted and have a learning difference or developmental disability are commonly referred to as twice-exceptional (2e).

While the term was first developed in educational contexts in the 1980’s to describe gifted people with specific learning disabilities, over the past 50 years, the term has evolved to encompass a broader number of physical, mental, and emotional differences: autism, ADHD, OCD, anxiety, mobility impairments, and more.

Our best estimates suggest that anywhere from 2-14% of the gifted population may be 2e.³⁴ However, this estimation varies by definition, and is likely an underestimation. This is due to the fact that many 2e people go their entire lifetime without being identified, since disabilities can mask giftedness—and vice versa.

At first, the concept of twice-exceptionalism seems contradictory: How can someone be both exceptionally intelligent, yet also have very real deficits in their abilities?

This is particularly true in the case of autism, where autistic people tend to demonstrate lower scores overall on standardized measures of IQ, but may have areas of great strength, extraordinary abilities, or even savant skills such as photographic memory, perfect pitch, or spatial abilities like memorizing maps.⁵

Autism researcher Dr. Bernard Crespi resolves this paradox by describing autism as form of high but imbalanced intelligence.⁶

Essentially, the genetically-driven components of intelligence are heightened in both gifted and autistic people, yet in autism, these components are unevenly distributed.⁷

Here’s what that looks like, and how it helps us to also understand giftedness: