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Posted By: fluoroneuro 2e or just bright+ADHD? - 01/20/22 01:35 AM
Hi all!

I recently learned the concept of twice-exceptionality. I think I'm 2e, but I'm not certain.

I was diagnosed with ADHD-PI, well into adulthood. As for being gifted, I have some evidence for that (beyond the fact that Your Rainforest Mind could be my biography, and Linda Silverman seems to have known me as a child). But I'm struggling with impostor syndrome (or is it healthy skepticism?).

I have some test results that indicate giftedness in some areas - if I'm not interpreting the test results incorrectly.

I have my Canadian Test of Basic Skills score sheet, from when I was 10.

I also have my neuropsych assessment report from 2017, which includes a bunch of different tests, but the results are almost all given only as verbal descriptors. They did give percentiles for my RIAS-2 index scores, but the subtest results are just verbal descriptors of score ranges.

At the time, I asked (in conversation) for my full results, but they said something like "Oh, we only share those with other professionals. We don't give them to clients, because our clients would misunderstand them."

So I'm making a written request to get the full report, as per the Personal Information Protection Act. I'm supposed to be "as specific as possible" about what information I'm requesting.

*** Here is my first question: How detailed do I have to be?

Do I need to name each test and subtest, and specify that I want numeric scores? Should I ask for the scores in a specific format, e.g. percentile? For the RIAS-2 subtests, should I ask for the age-adjusted T scores? Percentiles? Both?

*** Here is my second question: Could someone help me interpret the test results I currently have?

I've been reading on this forum for a few days, and it looks like sometimes people PM scores to aeh for further discussion. Is that what I should do?

I feel like 2e-ness explains a lot of the bewildering nature of my life story, and has more explanations to offer - unless I'm just fooling myself with a fairytale.

I'd super appreciate any help, tips, encouragement etc that anyone has to offer. Thank you so much!!
Posted By: aeh Re: 2e or just bright+ADHD? - 01/23/22 02:34 AM
Feel free to pm me!

...I should add that if you feel comfortable with discussing your scores in public (carefully, without too much personally-identifying information!), you have the advantage of thoughtful feedback from the rest of this community too. But act according to your own comfort level.

With regard to requesting your records, I am not familiar with laws in our northern neighbors on this point, so I can't speak to any details, but I would think that you would want to request any formal or informal assessment records, including normative data from specific assessment instruments, such as all standardized scores and percentiles, and clinical or qualitative commentary that was relevant to diagnostic formulations or recommendations. If there were any pre-existing written reports, you would want all of those.
Posted By: fluoroneuro Re: 2e or just bright+ADHD? - 01/26/22 01:21 AM
Thank you, that's super helpful! I sent off my request for my full assessment results yesterday. Hopefully that goes smoothly smile

I've scanned and anonymized my old Canadian Test of Basic Skills score sheet and the report I received from my neuropsych assessment. Here they are on dropbox. Please let me know if you spot any personal info I missed while anonymizing blush

CTBS scores

neuropsych assessment report


Also, surprise! I just noticed this in my high school transcript, printed in the margin to the right of the notes for my Grade 10 (1995-96) academic year, with no other context. I wish I knew what these were from!

Standard Score: 95 99 58 76
Percentile Rank: 98 99 81 98
Posted By: aeh Re: 2e or just bright+ADHD? - 01/31/22 11:05 PM
Interesting. It appears that during the K-12 years, you had a consistent pattern of academic strength in language-based skills, and relatively weaker (although perfectly age/grade-appropriate) math skills, which corresponds neatly with your cognitive testing from the neuropsych. That evaluation found exceptionally high verbal reasoning and average nonverbal reasoning, with short-term/working memory and rote speed both average (your verbal delayed recall/retention of some types of information was above average though). Some combination of the latter two areas of relative weakness is frequently observed in individuals diagnosed with any version of ADHD. Curiously, by the time you completed the adult evaluation, your academic math skills had caught up to your verbal reasoning ability, which would suggest that you successfully figured out how to use your strengths to compensate for your relative weaknesses sometime between the end of high school and the 2017 eval.

With regard to your principal question about 2e-ness, I think we can safely say that the data supports it. While your overall cognition measures in the optimally gifted range, your verbal cognition is likely highly gifted (based on the %ile). For the second e, in addition to your existing diagnosis of ADHD, there is an early and persistent history of significant differences between math and reading/writing achievement, with the latter commensurate with verbal cognition, and the former commensurate with nonverbal relative weaknesses, which could reasonably be interpreted as a 2e profile of the LD sort. The magnitude of the difference between strength and weakness is comparable to the kind of differences observed in persons of average cognition described as having specific learning disorders in mathematics (although, as I noted previously, you appear to have compensated rather effectively over the years).

EDIT: you do also have some other classifications which could contribute to 2e-ness. If you don't want to include them in this discussion, you may wish to redact them from the neuropsych. I'll note that they can also affect the same kinds of neurocognitive skills affected by ADHD, which can be a factor complicating differential diagnosis and the resulting action plans.
Posted By: fluoroneuro Re: 2e or just bright+ADHD? - 02/16/22 09:26 PM
[Moderator: I posted this a moment ago, but there seemed to be an error - the next screen was just blank instead of a confirmation. Sorry if this is a duplicate - I only want to post it once!]
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aeh, thank you for your reply. This is fascinating - and validating!

Your observation about me learning to compensate for relative weakness in math made my jaw drop. After high school, I went to university and, with great effort and many struggles due to my undiagnosed ADHD, got my BSc in Physics! I can think of several compensatory strategies* that helped me accomplish that. But without them, I still go "deer in the headlights" if I have to calculate a tip and the debit machine doesn't have a "percent" option!

By "other classifications", do you mean my anxiety? I don't mind talking about that in public. Or is there something else that I'm missing?

Oh yeah, I should let you know: when I try to PM you, I get an error message that says "aeh is over their Private Topic limit."

I have so many more comments and questions, but I'm super busy with other stuff, so I should keep this short today.

Thank you so much for your detailed feedback! I'm super interested to hear anything else you (or others) might think of!


* If anyone is interested to hear about specific compensatory strategies I've used, let me know, and I'll post a list of all the ones I can remember smile
Posted By: aeh Re: 2e or just bright+ADHD? - 02/18/22 11:55 PM
Thanks for the heads up! You're the second poster to point out that my pm box appears to be full. At some point, I'll have to do some cleaning.

Yes, I was referring to mental health as an additional exceptionality. Some people are sensitive about discussing that in public. I'm glad you are not, as it is far more prevalent than most people realize. Anxiety in particular is known to have a lot of impact on attention and working memory. And actually math as well. And, of course, there are some feedback effects, since feeling that one is struggling with attention, memory or math can make one feel anxious.
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