Wired article on autism

Wired magazine published this article on autism. I read it and I think it was interesting. Amanda Baggs, one of the women featured in the article, wrote some comments on her blog after the article was published.

The article discussed measuring intelligence in persons diagnosed with autism, specifically with two different intelligence tests: the Wechsler Intelligence Scale and Raven’s progressive matrices. Dawson et al. have showed that children with autism scored on average 30 percentile points higher on the Wechsler Scale than on Raven’s matrices (The level and nature of autistic intelligence). What seems to be lacking (I could be wrong though) is a discussion on what intelligence is - what is being measured? It seems very logical to me that someone who has problems with language and communication (and that is one of the diagnostic criteria of autism) will perform better on a non-verbal test such as Raven’s, than on a, at least partially, verbal test such as Wechsler. It also seems logical to assume that a test designed to measure intelligence in neurotypical persons will not correctly measure intelligence in persons with different intelligence profiles.

But what is intelligence? Is intelligence to be able to tell someone what “killing to birds with one stone” means, or to identify which segment completes a pattern? Is it possible to disregard language ability, cultural influences, life experience etc and pin down some sort of abstract entity that is intelligence?

I haven’t got any answers. Anyone else?