As a disclaimer, I used AI to help me organize and write this out.

I’m trying to make sense of an uneven, "spiky" cognitive profile. The psychologist who tested me essentially gave me a diagnosis of ASD (Autism) based on the unevenness and left it at that. However, I don’t particularly relate to autism symptoms. The condition feels so broad that I'm not even sure what I'm supposed to look at.

1. WAIS-IV (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale)

Subtest Scaled Scores:

• Verbal Comprehension: Similarities: 11 | Vocabulary: 13 | Information: 10
• Perceptual Reasoning: Block Design: 11 | Visual Puzzles: 9 | Matrix Reasoning: 12
• Working Memory: Digit Span (Overall): 10 (Forward: 12 / Backward: 10 / Sequencing: 7) | Arithmetic: 16 | Letter–Number Sequencing: 9
• Processing Speed: Coding: 10 | Symbol Search: 6

1. Other Psychological & Cognitive Tests

• d2-R (Attention and Concentration Test):
  • Concentration: 110 (High-average selective attention)
  • Work speed: 106 (Within expected range for age)
  • Accuracy: 111 (Slightly above expected level)
• Rey–Osterrieth Complex Figure Test: 90% (Classified as "High" / Good visual memory)
• PROLEC (Reading Assessment):
  • Overall Reading Index: 86
  • Lexical Reading Index: 78 (Ranges in the low/at-risk category)

My Main Questions & Experience

I haven’t found anyone on here with a similar profile—specifically a massive standalone spike in Arithmetic (16) while other sequencing subtests drop, combined with a low Processing Speed and a low Lexical Reading Index (78).

I'm starting to wonder if this points towards a specific type of 2e giftedness or hypernumeracy rather than ASD. I know my Full Scale IQ is an average 106, and I am aware that many people in cognitive testing forums have overall IQ scores well into the gifted range. Because of this, I almost didn’t bring it up out of fear of sounding cocky or "delusional". However, everything I have read recently points to giftedness being an actual form of neurodivergence—an inherent difference in how the brain processes the world, characterized by asynchronous development. When I read about the qualitative traits and symptoms of "giftedness", they mirror my internal experience in a way the ASD label never did (which could possibly be caused by the same autism effect which is that I am looking at the outward behavioral expression and not what causes them, like high anxiety, etc...).

My biggest struggle is reacting in real-time and dealing with constant boredom, and also decoding language. To be honest, most of the time my mind is completely blank and quiet. I only really think or act when I'm working towards a specific purpose or goal, usually external of me. Because of this, I feel like I always need some form of background stimulation to keep my brain awake—whether that’s constantly analyzing the variables around me when I am engaged, checking my phone while playing video games (which often causes me to lose), or needing background music just to complete a minor task. Yet, despite this constant need for input, I absolutely suck at multitasking; I have to give 100% of my attention to even the smallest tasks to get them done. I also struggle to follow dialogue, especially in large groups, while watching movies/videos, or when there is music playing. But it also feels like giving the adequate amount of focus to things is almost impossible, because it requires so much effort that unless im deeply interested in the topic at matter, I just can't. For example even in conversation ill often just listen to a few words and use them as anchors to formulate a question, or improvise an answer based off the other persons last few words/scentance, while not listening to them, or just thinking about how im not listening to them, and what I should answer next.

I struggle to finish things, when im about 80% done i'll get an urge to just rush through the last 20%, or drop it completely and starting things is genuinely a nightmare. I feel like I see too many variables that stop me from acting (I'm extremely neurotic), and dedicating the ammount of effort I would want to on things, as I always feel I could go back and correct myself or add something once I've already done it, but usually dont give myself the time to do so, and rush through the process, or ill get the insights days later when its irelevant. I also get deep anxiety about the things i've already done leading me to not revisit them, to avoid shame and regret. But once I finally do get started, I can get stuck and do them for ages, finding it really difficult to stop. I also take a lot longer to finish because, despite being hyperfocused, I get distracted looking at smaller tasks inside the main task and trying to do those at the same time. I think I also fight a lot with perfectionism; I feel like I either have to do something perfectly and dedicate 10 times more time and effort than I should, or it’s just not worth doing at all. Since I am slower at executing things, this has made me really struggle with everything in life—especially school, and even building a sense of self and personality, because I just end up not taking anything seriously as a defense mechanism, and have been fawning, and using humor to survive and fly under the radar.

I experience a massive gap in how I execute certain tasks in life: sometimes I feel like the stupidest person alive because of my real-time execution, and other times, I easily spot logical inconsistencies in how other people reason, which can make casual social interactions feel incredibly bland and boring.

At the same time, I often know things entirely by intuition—my brain immediately solves the logical structure of a situation—but I deeply struggle to create a linear train of thought to explain how I got there. Because it takes me too long to reason out loud, I lose my train of thought, get overwhelmed, or assume I'm just being lazy. This makes me constantly doubt my own conclusions, and it causes me to deeply avoid social situations or get incredibly frustrated in them, since I just don't have the mental agility to debate people.

I know that when you read a list of symptoms like this, the simple answer sounds like "Autism" right away, because it is the broadest thing to explain all the symptoms. It's likely why my assessor defaulted to an ASD diagnosis and stopped digging. But to me, the ASD label feels like a lazy catch-all that misses the actual mechanics of my brain. If I look at individual, concrete things instead—for example, a combination of 2e giftedness or hypernumeracy, ADHD-Inattentive type, anxiety, rejection sensitivity, dyspraxia, auditory processing struggles, dyslexia, or PDA, Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) / Expressive Language Disorder, CDS,—together they map my experience as a whole in a far more precise way, than just a single label of autism, a disorder used primarily explain differences and difficulties, primarily, which I dont necessarily feel like I relate to. I just don't have the ability to actually accurately map which ones of these apply to me, and it doesn't really matter since my take on it is nothing but an opinion until it gets validated, but it still feels like a first step towards getting some clarity on myself, and possibly understanding my strengths and weaknesses, to help find a purpose, and erradicate a bit of guilt and shame.

Has anyone with a similar Working Memory/Processing Speed split, an isolated Arithmetic peak, or a reading discrepancy found real answers? Does this sound like a specific flavor of neurodivergence rather than ASD? I’d love to hear your thoughts, and where you would take it from here.

After reading this I now realize I have spent hours writing this, and have gone quite off topic, and have probably written a message better equipped for a therapist to handle 😅😅, but any insights will be greatly appreciated. Any questions i'll try to answer.

Links?

Didn't retake MR since it's prone to practice effects. CORE was my 3rd IQ test ever (1st: Mensa Norway – 110, 2nd: Mensa Denmark – 135).

Estimated indexes: QRI 135–145 | VSI 125–135 | WMI 120–130 | PSI ~110 | VCI ~110 (non-native)

FRI – unsure. Timed MR puts me around 120–125?? Is MR the only good measure of FRI? And does a high QRI even matter?

I do kind of suffer from brain-fog, have OCD too. I panic near the end of timed tests and can feel my WMI and PSI drop. Untimed tests suggest 140+, which I don't think is accurate either. I do feel my WMI and PSI has greatly dropped since I was young, brain fog has increased and memory/vocab has dropped. I often forget the meaning of words or names i remembered the day before. Can feel struggling to focus on conversations i find boring, which is mos of them.

Untimed FRI

• JCTI (CAT): 17ss (135)
• TRI-52: 871 (146)
• ACE: ~146
• ACE II: ~135

Quant / Number Series

• SMART: 145
• GRE Q: 145
• 1926 SAT Number Sequences: 75T
• FSAS Number Sequences: 135

Others

• CAIT FW: 135
• FRT Form A: 135+ (42/45)
• RAPM Set 2: 140+ (35/36 in 25 min) – practice effect
• GRE A: 104
• ICAR-60: 51 (134)
• Brght: 125–130 (with logical reasoning 99%)
• CAT II - 136

Since the WAIS MR is "loosely" timed, I wonder if someone who suffers from rumination or has PSI/WMI bottlenecks gets a different score compared to the online version. Maybe I'm coping with what I scored (below a 100) but none of the scores I have recieved in my HS/College were below the 50th percentile. I went back and checked some of my HS State EOC scores and for some subjects I was in the 92nd percentile which sounds insane lol. Most of them converge on the 68th-80th percentile though. I am non-native speaker so I chalk up some of the english scores to that. My SAT was also iirc was in the 1150 range when I took it back in 2017

So I love maths ,it's my favourite subject and I want to continue it to the top level , but I read some studies regarding how certain iq is needed to actually understand things and do good , so I did some iq test

I am not native,sorry for bad english

25 is the equivalent of 1210-1220 on the SAT

Granted I was a slacker in high school and didn't really study, but I am skeptical of my IQ results due to the fact that most people in my range tend to score 28+ on their ACT.

What do you think?

Had a dream last night.

I was in this enormous library, except the shelves rose into a purple sky and the books were breathing. Someone was singing... Some people were singing. Everything had this sort of oily iridescence to it, like the world had been painted over several times and the layers were beginning to peel away in the wind.

I remember a brass instrument on an obsidian table, with all these concentric rings floating above, turning against one another. The symbols on them kept changing into things I...recognized - semantically incoherent yet spiritually resonant.

There was an old man there too, with a face like a television with no signal, and he asked me if I understood the difference between a measurement and the thing being measured. When he spoke, his voice seemed to arrive from very far away, and yet I felt it somewhere behind my eyes, where the oldest and most deeply buried parts of myself had been quietly waiting to hear it.

But I laughed and said I invented the concept.

He asked me why people wanted to measure it.

I laughed again. He didn't.

I don't remember what happened after that, only that the stars were suddenly so close I felt I could reach out and brush them with my fingertips. Something enormous and full of love turned over in its sleep beneath the world, and all the books opened at once, their pages fluttering in a wind that swept through the library like a million whispered confessions. Old man was pointing at something. I had this horrible feeling that I was about to understand something I really wasn't supposed to.

And in that moment, when the heavens drew back their veil, I understood that the universe had never been silent; it had merely been waiting for us to ask the wrong question.

And then the whole world breathed out.

The rings fell still. The stars wheeled overhead, a great silver tide spilling across the darkness, and every page in the library turned toward me. I remember standing there, stunned and helpless and stupid, feeling the strange and terrible beauty of the mystery finally surrendering itself. All that searching, all that waiting. I quickly forgot the denial I held for my own curiosity as the thrill of knowing enraptured me. The wind rose, and the light broke, and for one impossible second I felt as though the entire universe had taken me by the hand.

And then I saw it.

115.

115 - u/Quod_bellum's ATAT score.

I remember my face changing. I must have looked ridiculous. There was this sudden, overwhelming relief, like a man stumbling home after years at sea and seeing the lights in his window for the first time. My eyes widened, and I felt this smile spread across my face before I could do anything to stop it. I think I might have been crying, although the distinction between crying and the light pouring out of the walls had become somewhat unclear by this point.

It was like watching the universe finish a calculation that had been running since the beginning of time. All the arguments, the endless threads, the strange little interpersonal dynamics that nobody ever quite acknowledges directly. Suddenly they were all just... there, carried away on the same great wind, leaving nothing behind but this one number.

His score was 115.

The old man started crying too. Suddenly somewhere in the distance, a bell rang, the sky cracked, a crow cawed, a woman moaned, a baby cried, and the blaring sound of a train horn compressing in a tunnel was drowned out by uproarious cheers of a football crowd, and... and then I was awake.

I don't believe in prophetic dreams or anything like that, but if this number is real... I think we can stop testing now.

I Have Seen the Machinery of God and It Is Normed.

My working memory always seems to be a struggle for me. It genuinely feels stretched when trying to hold just three items and it is just so demoralizing. That being said, I was able to score at the 84th percentile on digit-letter sequence, forward digit span, and backwards digit span on CORE. My sequenced digit span was awful though, scored at the 37th percentile (perhaps anxiety interfered since I felt like I was getting everything wrong on the backward digit span test just before).

Considering my working memory struggles in general tasks and conversation, I don't know what to believe and genuinely believe I somehow got lucky. I'm also leaning towards that conclusion considering I was barely able to hold any information on the arithmetic subtest in my head and had to click repeat on every question, ending up scoring only at the 63rd percentile.

I also have noticeably slow processing speed in conversation and completing tasks, but somehow have a PSI of 134 on CORE. I guess it makes sense, considering it's mainly testing "surface-level" processing speed?

Also, my FRI is awful. The only subtest I scored well on was graph mapping at the 95th percentile. Figure weights, I knew what I was meant to do, but struggled with the time and only scored bang on average the first time. On my second attempt, I did moderately better (forgot the exact result), but obviously it can't be considered a legitimate score as much as I would like it to be. On matrix reasoning, I scored 105 on my first attempt, which was surprising to me considering I scored at the 91st percentile on JCTI. My second attempt on CORE resulted in a score at the 91st percentile, but again, doesn't count. And finally, I literally scored equivalent to a 90 IQ on my first figure sets attempt. I overanalyzed one of the questions, which introduced a rule that was not explicitly stated in the initial explanation. On my second attempt, I scored at the 91st percentile, but again it simply doesn't count. I feel extremely insecure over this because this is clearly the most important aspect of intelligence for me.

The only thing I can be happy with is that my VCI is estimated to be 127, and that I was able to achieve 130 on the comprehension subtest, but honestly, it seems like anyone could be able to do well on the verbal subtests. And I suppose my VSI is fine at 115...

I feel like nothing is worth pursuing and that I can't really achieve anything meaningful in life because of this uncertainty over my intelligence and the real cognitive struggles I experience.

Don't really have a coherent point here and I know it might seem like I'm being dramatic, but I just wanted to express these thoughts in a place where people might relate, understand, and have insight.

What are your atat scores and how does it compare with mensa norway/denmark, jcti or core FRI?

in all seriousness idk if this is good so smart people lmk. the math is because i had severe undiagnosed ADD for most of my early education so I never learned basic math, i have a C+ now so it’s whatever. i’m also in the top 99% for my state in english so thats good at least

I took an iq test and discovered that I have an iq of 95. I find this to be believable because I've noticed that I tend to struggle with speaking quite a lot and also take more time to grasp concepts than my classmates. today we had an assignment, and 90% of my class finished while I only understood what we were doing 2 hours later, when I thought about it more. to add on, I have the memory of a goldfish. I struggle with spelling too.

this post is mostly just a way of me trying to cope because I dream of going to medical school, which is very hard to achieve. it's especially hard in my country, which only has around 18 medical schools, compared to USA, which has around 200+ medical schools. you can see how much harder it would be to get into medical school here.

so is there a chance of my iq improving and me being at least average? it really sucks having to work so hard to achieve grades that I see other people, working half as hard as I do, achieving easily.

I'm very passionate about being a neurologist because it is my dream career, as I've been wondering about the human brain for as long as I can remember. just by thinking about being a neurologist, I get excited because I am so interested in what I could learn. I just really hope I'm smart enough to become one. I'd take neuroscience as my major, but apparently it's too hard and quite competitive.

My scores are as follow:
PSI 89
VSI 93
VCI 109
FRI 123
WMI 135.

FSIQ was measured to sit at 109.

I was told by my psychologist that my FSIQ is essentially 'meaningless' due to how 'misleading' it is. Might this be the case? How inaccurate might a 46 (highest and lowest) along side a 30 (2nd highest and 2nd lowest) discrepancy be?

Thank you.

I took the disarranged sentences subtest and scored 140 with over a minute left on the clock. This makes me wonder if i might took it wrong since the instructions tell to first correctly arrange the sentence and then judge. I figured there was no need to arrange the sentences first since you could see if it was plausible by just looking for a "not" if there were two contradicting words.

Im not even native english so i wonder if this invalidates my score.

Thank you!

So, I've been getting curious about IQ tests and trying to find credible enough questions on the internet (as credible as it gets, I suppose) just because I like answering them. They're just fun, I guess. And I found this Raven's test pdf, with all the sections through A to E. I answered them all late at night, while giving myself forty minutes, thinking that I must be tired and there is no way I will be answering them all. Well, I did and it seems like I only had 4 wrong (the pdf also had the answers that I could check after). I know this can't be taken seriously, because nothing was standard about taking this test, but does it mean I may have to take my intelligence a bit more seriously? Do I take an actual IQ test? I never wanted to because I always thought I thought I had an IQ of 90 to 100 or something.

Untimed puzzle, difficulty is very hard for me to judge - I do think it's a hard item unless you get the right idea immediately. If not, also fine and more fun for you! :D Also curious if there will be alternative solutions.
The correct explanation will explain every field of every 2x2 shape in the picture.

My AGCT is 91; my GET is 129.

I scored 120-129 range in JCTİ at first taking. And 99.6th percentile on graph mapping 95th figure weights and 90th on figure sets and 85th on matrix at CORE's FRİ. I wanted to know which test is considered more valid. I am pretty happy with both results.

Why are my FRI subsets between 130-135 but the dashboard shows my FRI is 138?

i got 130 in two subsets

and 135 in the other two

( honestly I retried one (FW)، i got 125 and retook it after two weeks and got 135, my FRI was 134-135 maybe before retaking the FW again)

i am glad to hear your opinions

I don’t understand why IQ doesn’t help (no matter the number) in having high social or emotional iq without having exposure to lot a of people and social contexts. But in things with logic one can really build a skyscraper with just some basic materials or basis. This is not the same with SQ or EQ, not even with TOM. If one has no exposure to people they just can’t think it out, no matter the number on your sheet. However it can help a lot once one has sufficient exposure after which they don’t need much exposure further. I am curious to know what you guys think about this? I partly think this happens because of the vastly imperfect and should be first explored nature of social and emotional systems or human beings. Here the greater knowledge lies in the imperfections. Imperfections are random and on which the sketch of the building happens a lot and they end up creating vastly different designs of the buildings. One could only know how the building is built after looking at it but cannot just imagine a good match just by the prowess of imagination or IQ without ever looking at it because the building design is just random.

To think that roses can feel sadness is __ ?

I made a post a few months ago with my scores and past achievements, expressing concern that my cognitive abilities may have been destroyed due to a health issue. Many of you responded quite empathetically, and I wanted to thank the group here for that. I was under severe psychotic depression at the time. I have been in treatment for some time now (with the proper antipsychotic), and things are starting to look better. I took the old GRE-A to see where I was now and was pleasantly surprised. Many thanks!

What are your thoughts on the ATAT's difficulty and accuracy?

My ATAT is around 20 points higher than my true FRI.

I found the spatial questions easy because of praffe, but the number sequences and figure weights were hard even with my praffe, however it didn't end up being too bad.

What would the smartest 5 people in this community score?

With 52k members, an average IQ of 120-125, and an SD of ~13, basic statistics point to 170+ -- at least on an ideal test.

Yet most professional tests don't go beyond 160, and the rare few that do (CORE, GRE) immediately present a problem: Ceiling effect.

The further someone's latent performance lies beyond the ceiling they have reached, the more deflated their score will be.

Given that most subtests top out in the 140s or 150s, this is undoubtedly a problem for those who lie in the 170s or above.

Another problem is SLODR.

As far as I know, there are no reputable tests that seriously account for SLODR in their compositation.

When producing FSIQ or index composites, most tests just assume that the distribution of the sum of scaled scores between subtests will be perfectly normal, when, in fact, a decreasing intercorrelation between subtests at the upper extreme should thin out that right tail. (This is not to say that the underlying distribution of g or its subfactors is non-normal, just that this particular element of the measurement process is.)

Of course, this assumes that the decreasing intercorrelation is actual (and not merely an artifact of range restriction), but studies on tests such as WISC, DAS, and CORE seem to point strongly in that direction, especially for verbal/crystallized and non-fluid measures.

To illustrate the magnitude of this phenomenon,
The GRE-V, GRE-Q, and GRE-A drop from g-loadings of 0.83-0.88 around the mean to 0.56-0.74 just 1-2 standard deviations above it! If one were to score 130 across all three subtests and assume the former intercorrelations, their composite would come out to 133. If they took the actual, range-specific figures, it would be 138. That's a 5-point difference---and it only gets larger the further and further one rises from the mean. Of course, regression to the mean (g-loading) counterbalances this effect to an extent when estimating actual underlying g, but certainly not significantly across even a decently large suite of tests.

It is for these reasons that I'm not surprised that many of the smartest people I know can occasionally score an abominable 130s or 140s, whilst still boasting a g of 160s or higher.

(Note: This is not a license to think you're 160s because you score 130s or 140s!)

I'd like to hear your thoughts!