Brief report: The use of WAIS-III in adults with HFA and Asperger syndrome.

Researchers gave the WAIS-III IQ test to 16 adults with high-functioning autism and 27 adults with Asperger syndrome. They wanted to see if the old verbal-performance IQ split still mattered.

They also looked at each small subtest score to find hidden strengths and weak spots.

The two groups had the same overall verbal and performance IQs. The old VIQ-PIQ gap did not help tell them apart.

But single subtests told a different story. HFA adults were slower on processing-speed tasks. Asperger adults scored lower on Digit Span.

Ghaziuddin et al. (2004) first claimed Asperger adults show higher verbal IQ. The new data say that gap disappears when you match groups carefully, so skip the big IQ split and zoom in on subtests.

May et al. (2011) found only HFA adults struggle with smell identification. That odd deficit lines up with the slower processing speed seen here, both pointing to unique HFA markers.

Kocher et al. (2015) later showed big VIQ-NVIQ splits are common in autistic youth. The adult study sharpens the message: the split is noise; look at the subtest profile instead.

Next time you read a psychological report, ignore the VIQ-PIQ difference. Circle the subtest scatter. Slow coding speed may signal HFA. Weak digit span may hint at Asperger profile. These fine points guide better recommendations for jobs or support groups.