Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional ASD and Gifted "cannot coexist"??

The learning-styles business has been called into question: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091216162356.htm

There's no reason to assume most people with AS are visual-spatial learners. It's a stereotype and gets in the way of actually educating them.

DeeDee

And about precluding the language delay...for Aspergers.

My son had very significant speech and oral motor delays. It didn't affect his receptive language at all but if you aren't able to produce intelligible words it does delay your language.

So one psychologist (when he was 8) gave him a PDD-NOS/Aspergers diagnosis because technically he did have a language delay as a young child. But most professionals go with the straight mild Aspergers diagnosis when discussing my son and his challenges because that is the more accurate diagnosis leaving out his language delay as a young child, which was 80% resolved by age 4.

The new proposed DSM definition of autism eliminates the Asperger's and PDD-NOS categories altogether, lumping them into autism, and takes langauge delay out of the equation. The social deficits, inflexibility, and stereotyped/repetitive interests and behaviors become the key defining features.

http://www.dsm5.org/ProposedRevisions/Pages/proposedrevision.aspx?rid=94#

DeeDee

Well...then my son is now magically cured because he won't qualify under that definition as written. I hope there is a grandfather clause.

Has this http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/eric/fact/asperger.pdf been mentioned yet? I would say that AS can sometimes be harder to distinguish in kids with very high IQ's, but that doesn't mean it isn't there.