A pilot study on comparison of intelligence in children with autism and controls: Raven's progressive matrices and wechsler intelligence scale-III

Abstract

Introduction: Intelligence in children with autism has been a challenge for long. Previous studies have reported an uneven performance on intelligence tests. Better performance on Raven's Progressive Matrices (RPM) as compared to Wechsler's intelligence scale for children III (WISC-III) has been found in some studies. RPM is quick and easy to administer. Hence, there is a need to understand if RPM is a comparable test to tap the intelligence in children with autism. Aims and Objectives: To find the percentile intelligence quotient (IQ) scores of children with autism and neurotypical children using RPM and WISC III and to compare the performance of these two groups on IQ tests. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study including 15 children with autism and normal (neurotypical) children was done after institutional ethics committee approval. The subjects were subjected to WISC-III and RPM. Results: The study shows that neurotypical children perform better on intelligence tests than children with autism. Both tests can be used to measure intelligence in children with autism fairly owing to their correlation. However, RPM showed better scores than WISC-III, for children with autism. Conclusions: RPM can be used as an alternative and an even better test to measure intelligence in children with autism just as the standard WISC-III. Further studies in a larger population of children with autism are warranted to validate our findings.