A recent study found that the people with higher IQs have more stable interactions between regions of their brain. This seems to back up the general thought among the specialists in studying intelligence agree on. Simply speaking, high intelligence is linked to areas of the brain working well together. But this study suggests another possibility.

“Our results suggest that processes of controlled attention – that is, the ability to stay focused and to concentrate on a task – may play an important role for general intelligence.”

In other words, focus and concentration a primary parts of high intelligence.

---

Another source on this topic that I have recently read is a book entitled How We Learn by Stanislas Dehaene. That book states that learning to learn is arguably the most important factor in academic success. It identifies four pillars for learning.

• Focused attention
• Active engagement
• Error feedback
• A cycle of daily rehearsals and nightly consolidation.

---

Finally, that brings me to the main topic of this post. One of the central traits of people with Aspergers is the ability to stay focused. I know that proved to be essential to my success in the corporate world. I was just not affected by distractions as so many of my colleagues were.

I wonder if there has been a study of the intelligence of those with Aspergers vs the general population. I wouldn’t be surprised to see that Aspies are more intelligent than the rest of the population. Since Aspergers has been gobbled up by autism and most of the resources are now used to “fix” young children, I doubt that much has been studied in this area.

As usual, I am going to take the contrarian view and speculate that Aspies, as a whole, are more intelligent and focused than most others. If that is true, then the moral of this story is that we should be trying to figure out how to teach the general population how to focus as we Aspies already do.

That would result in a much better world than trying to teach Aspies not to be Aspies.

Let’s finish this post off with the fourth item on the list above.

A cycle of daily rehearsals and nightly consolidation.

I don’t know about all Aspies, but I am constantly doing daily rehearsals of many topics. I need to get my thoughts in order to more fully understand what I am studying. Nightly consolidation is a biggie with me as well. I can’t tell you how many times I have woken up at night with a thought on my mind that needs consolidation, and that takes hours to accomplish. 😵‍💫