Does WISC-IV Underestimate the Intelligence of Autistic Children?

• Published in: Journal of autism and developmental disorders Vol. 46; no. 5; pp. 1582 - 1589
• Main Authors: Nader, Anne-Marie, Courchesne, Valérie, Dawson, Michelle, Soulières, Isabelle
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.05.2016; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Adolescent; Archives & records; Autism; Autism Spectrum Disorder - diagnosis; Autism Spectrum Disorder - psychology; Autistic children; Behavioral Science and Psychology; Brain; Care and treatment; Child; Child and School Psychology; Children; Cognition & reasoning; Comparative Analysis; Complications and side effects; Female; Humans; Intellectual disabilities; Intelligence; Intelligence - physiology; Intelligence Tests; Intelligence Tests - standards; Male; Matrices; Memory; Neuropsychology; Neurosciences; Nonverbal Tests; Pediatrics; Perception In Autism; Pervasive Developmental Disorders; Psychology; Public Health; Raven Progressive Matrices; Risk factors; Scores; Test Construction; Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children III; Wechsler Scales - standards; New York; United States > US; Autism; Abstract reasoning; Children; Wechsler scales; Intelligence; Raven’s progressive matrices
• ISSN: 0162-3257; 1573-3432; 1573-3432
• DOI: 10.1007/s10803-014-2270-z

Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) is widely used to estimate autistic intelligence (Joseph in The neuropsychology of autism. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011 ; Goldstein et al. in Assessment of autism spectrum disorders. Guilford Press, New York, 2008 ; Mottron in J Autism Dev Disord 34(1):19–27, 2004 ). However, previous studies suggest that while WISC-III and Raven’s Progressive Matrices (RPM) provide similar estimates of non-autistic intelligence, autistic children perform significantly better on RPM (Dawson et al. in Psychol Sci 18(8):657–662, doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01954.x , 2007 ). The latest WISC version introduces substantial changes in subtests and index scores; thus, we asked whether WISC-IV still underestimates autistic intelligence. Twenty-five autistic and 22 typical children completed WISC-IV and RPM. Autistic children’s RPM scores were significantly higher than their WISC-IV FSIQ, but there was no significant difference in typical children. Further, autistic children showed a distinctively uneven WISC-IV index profile, with a “peak” in the new Perceptual Reasoning Index. In spite of major changes, WISC-IV FSIQ continues to underestimate autistic intelligence.