She commented that he had no concept of "alike or "similar". In the comprehension subtest, when asked why a policeman wore a uniform he answered "so he won't get cold".
This seems like a perfectly valid answer to the given question to me. If it wasn't the one expected, then that's probably more a reflection on the tester than the testee.
This is a common problem for testing gifted individuals, because they see things differently than expected, and that would be very likely to show up on a subtest for similarities. The test is about relationships, and different objects can be related in several different ways. For instance, given a stack of images of various edible plants, a tester might be looking for them to be grouped into fruits and vegetables... and without any further instructions but "put them into groups that are similar," the gifted child might sort them by color, shape, size, personal tastes (likes/dislikes), parts of plants (root/leaf/stalk/fruit/etc.), and many more. So one could group and orange with a carrot, an orange with an onion, or an orange with a pumpkin, and still be right... just in a different sense.
DS has always been a very intense child. He doesn't like to attempt anything he can't do perfectly well the first time. He has a very low tolerance to frustration and is easily distracted (usually by a competing visual stimulus).
He has poor social skills. He plays in a group at school, but is never asked over for play dates, and is rarely invited to birthday parties.
This behavior sounds typical for a highly-gifted child, especially one who is failing to find any true peers.
He managed kindergarten and 1st grade OK,(B's and C's) but in 2nd grade it became obvious that he was having difficulty with written expression. A speech pathology assessment (CELF 4) demonstrated language skills at the higher end of normal. The SP could see that he was having difficulty putting his thoughts on paper and recommended writing scaffolds.
My DD7 seemed to be having some difficulty along these lines last year, when she was doing writing assignments. I helped her with a few of them at home, and it seemed REALLY difficult for her at first. Looking back, it seems like she was dealing with a number of complicated issues at the same time, mostly centered around perfectionism. She didn't have the confidence to organize her thoughts, and she was aware her thoughts were working well above her demonstrated spelling and grammatical levels.
After she'd been through the writing process a couple of times, she had more confidence and it seemed to come much easier for her. For the last writing assignment of the year, all I really had to do was help her interpret the somewhat bizarre assignment, and remind her of the requirements whenever her creative process was leading her too far off topic. Otherwise, she asked me to spell maybe three words for her, and she handled the rest. Her result was surprisingly entertaining for such a lame assignment.
