title: Superior fluid intelligence in children with Asperger's disorder.
abstract: Asperger's disorder is one of autistic spectrum disorders; sharing clinical features with autism, but without developmental delay in language acquisition. There have been some studies of intellectual functioning in autism so far, but very few in Asperger's disorder. In the present study, we investigated abstract reasoning ability, whose form of intelligence has been labeled fluid intelligence in the theory of Cattell [Cattell, R. B. (1963). Theory of fluid and crystallized intelligence: A critical experiment. Journal of Educational Psychology, 54, 1-22.], in children with Asperger's disorder. A test of fluid intelligence, the Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices Test, was administered to 17 children with Asperger's disorder and 17 age-, gender-, and FIQ-matched normal children. The results showed that children with Asperger's disorder outperformed on the test of fluid reasoning than typically developing children. We suggest that individuals with Asperger's disorder have higher fluid reasoning ability than normal individuals, highlighting superior fluid intelligence.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuropsychiatry, Keio University School of Medicine, 35 Shinanomachi, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, Japan. di055010@sc.itc.keio.ac.jp
authors.forename: Mika
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hayashi
authors.forename: Motoichiro
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kato
authors.forename: Kazue
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Igarashi
authors.forename: Haruo
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kashima
mesh_terms: D020817:Asperger Syndrome / Q000523:psychology*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007360:Intelligence; D008297:Male; D011340:Problem Solving; D012016:Reference Values; D014705:Verbal Behavior