I agree with you, UM-- but I'd add that in some high LOG children, this is also a matter of profound asynchrony in social development, as well.
I'm reluctant to call that a bad thing, however, since they NEED those social skills in order to have a more easy path throughout their lives. Effectively, the ability to adapt socially is an incredible ability in a person who is very far from normative.
So the other child who did dominate? Well, in terms of social interactions, that may have consequences too.
It mitigates a lot of the rough edges on the mismatch to be able to act as a chameleon or make others less uneasy with us. Provided that it isn't all the way into "patronizing" or "manipulative" I mean-- as it certainly can be, in a child who is facile enough in this respect. It can be a kind of lying, even. I know that my own DD never really saw it that way until we pointed it out to her-- and afterwards, she was more willing to demonstrate her knowledge. She did have to find more pro-social means of doing so, however. She was never ever going to be the insufferable curve-setter who "knew everything" all the time-- not because she wanted to be liked by her classmates, but because she genuinely wanted to take nothing away from their learning and reinforcement opportunities. So she figured out that in cooperative settings, she could facilitate other peers' learning without just presenting what SHE knew already. Does that make sense? This kind of thing is much easier in inquiry-driven settings than in classic tell-and-respond ones.
