Challenging Stereotypes of Math Giftedness and Math Disability in Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

Background: People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are often stereotyped as gifted mathematicians—like the socially inept physicist, Sheldon Cooper from the TV series The Big Bang Theory. Essentially, the dominant view suggests that the symptoms of ASD are somehow related to math ability. This bias may foster unrealistic expectations and lead to frustration for students with ASD who are not so highly skilled. An accurate description of the prevalence of math giftedness and disability in ASD is critical, but little research exists. Results from Jones et al. (2009) showed that there were 5.5x more students with ASD who would be considered low-achievers compared to the rate of low-achieving students found in the general population. Yet, Foley-Nicpon et al. (2012) showed that the math skills of gifted students with ASD were advanced. Together, these two studies highlight that while a diagnosis of ASD may impact math ability, ASD seems to predict higher than expected rates of both mathematical giftedness and disability, yet the reasons for this are unclear. To begin to elucidate which underlying processes are most important to the students’ math achievement, we will explore the relative impact that language ability, fluid reasoning (FR) skills and ASD symptomology have on math ability of students with ASD.

Objectives: We examined the:

• rates of high- and low-achieving students with ASD in math and compared the observed rates to the rates of high- and low-achievers in the general population; and
• relative impact of ASD symptomology, language and FR in predicting the children’s math ability.

Methods: 36 youth with ASD (5–12yrs; FR scores > 80) completed the following tests.

FR: Raven’s Progressive Matrices and the Sequential Order subtest of the Leiter-3.

Language: Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-5 Expressive Language Index and Peabody Picture Vocabulary Scale-4.

Math: KeyMath-3 Diagnostic Assessment (Cdn. Ed.) Basic Concepts (e.g. algebra, geometry), Operations (i.e., arithmetic), and Applications (i.e., problem-solving).

ASD Symptomology: Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS-2).

Results: Across the three KeyMath-3 composites, the rates of low-achieving students with ASD were 1.5–3.5x higher than the rates found in the general population (Fig. 1). Similarly, the rates of high-achieving students with ASD were 3.3–4.6x higher than the expected rates. Chi-squared analyses showed that these differences were significant. Neither age nor SRS-2 scores were correlated with math ability, while language and FR were each large and significant predictors with standardized betas ranging from 0.3 to 0.7 (Table 2).

Conclusions: This research investigated whether a diagnosis of ASD is associated with math ability. The first analysis showed that there are greater than expected numbers of students with ASD who have either significant math strengths or math weaknesses suggesting that autism somehow leads to both. However, the second analysis showed that ASD symptomology per se was not the primary cause of these differences. Instead, this suggested that knowing about a student’s FR and language ability was more important to understanding their math skills than knowing that the student had a diagnosis of ASD.