Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Processing Speed

Interesting, I can understand the correlation. My youngest was tested for ADHD at the same time he had all of the other tests. He didn't have ADHD. He is also very fast in subject matter that interests him.

Thanks for the idea on Lumosity.

Our thought was attention, and partially the reason we had him tested. But they stated there is no possible way he has ADD or ADHD or any other learning disorder. That it is not intellectual, he has the intelligence to do it, it is a behavior that he has - perfectionism. But what I still don't understand is why they he doesn't put more of that perfeccionistic tendency into completing it 100% - now that would be ideal!

Have you read the book Misdiagnosis by Jim Webb?

I probably need to read Misdiagnosis. I think ds does have ADHD although a big contributing factor to his behavior is boredom so I am keeping that in mind as we work through everything. I don't want him defined by his ADHD when there is so much more to him. He also has slow processing speed and is probably gifted in several areas.

This is not at all unusual. I wouldn't truly call it slow processing, I would call it poor fit of his educational environment to his learning needs for too long - resulting in unhealthy perfectionism.

My son - now 13 - described it as: The easy questions are so easy that I think they couldn't possibly be this easy, so I study them carefully to figure out what the trick is.

How sad!
Grinity

I'm reading How the Gifted Brain Learns right now as well. I've found it to have a lot of good info on twice exceptionality and underachievement as well as ways to reverse patterns of underachievement. You might want to check that one out as well as the Misdiagnosis book.

In my dd's instance, I think that she does just tick more slowly. For instance, when we are volunteering at our local humane society, I can clean 2/3 of the cat cages in the time that she does well less than 1/3 of them. Although she does have some perfectionism issues, I really don't think that they play out in regard to litter boxes and cat food.

If your ds did well on the block design part of the PRI, which is also timed, and seems to be more impacted by perfectionism than true slower speed, it may be something that he will improve with more appropriately challenging work. My dd was in the 25th percentile for the block design test and the 99th & 99.9th for the other two tests on PRI, which again showed the slower speed there. I do think that some of her anxiety issues related to being timed came into play on that test as well, though.

Wow. We are experiencing this now with DC. This might be the answer we are looking for.

This is interesting. DS7 has attention issues that I'm trying to get to the root of. He's balking at all the testing we've done lately (vision, CognitiveMap, initial hearing test), so I'm laying off for awhile. We don't have any gifted specialists here, but his pysch is very in tune with him. She thinks he's easily distracted from tasks by racing thoughts, which is part of gifted traits. He's not a clear cut case according to her.

For sure, I see what you guys are saying - he was only tuned into math from algebra on. Before that, it was a struggle jumping from topic to topic as they all didn't hold his interest, hands on learning or not. Yet he'd come out with little calculations here and there (number of people in a restaurant, prime numbers in odd places etc). So we didn't do drills, just concepts.

I checked through his Wisc IV report and his processing speed is in the +70th percentile while the rest are in the +99%. This is what necessitated the calculation of the GAI. At the time, the tester told me that he was processing quickly (no need to relook after once or twice to remember the symbols), but he was writing laboriously (he has fine motor skill issues) and after a while, stopped to crack a joke.

He also stops processing when presented wtih a new task, say, a completely different math problem from what he knows. He does need persuasion to get started, but it's generally alright. Is this part of perfectionism?

I read Misdiagnosis which contains this statement: "if a child can sit down and do Lego for 45mins, he basically doesn't have ADHD". Is this the experience of most parents here? Mine can do Lego the whole day, but he does quickly zone out when he has to do something uninteresting to him.

Another page that I found very heldpful was this:
http://www.sengifted.org/articles_counseling/Lind_BeforeReferringAGiftedChildForADD.shtml

It's so confusing. I'm starting to wonder if I can ever get a straight answer. Whether he does have ADHD, APD or not, I'd probably be looking at a non-med strategy (my initial gut reaction/feel) anyway.

Wow you said it !! His BD on the PRI was the lowest at 95 (other than the PSI (50) .. and the tester did state he would do much better in an appropriate educational setting. And that is where the idea of Move or Homeschool came into play.

It's not easy finding that 'appropriate setting', and we've actually thought about moving!

Did you ask whoever tested your DS about ADHD? As we were advised our DS does not have any learning disability - and ruled out everything due to the testing, other than the fact that he is profoundly gifted.

We don't have anyone near us who has worked with gifted children, so we made a trip to get the testing done. It wasn't easy to make that decision, and now that we have all this information, I wonder when we'll have all the answers to the new questions that arise daily, maybe our son will have to provide that for us in the future!

The tester (who is the psych he's seeing now) noted his squirelly-ness last year and suggested breaking up his WISC testing into 2 sessions. During the test, he was distracted; he even read bits of a book as he did some portions of the test. She didn't stop him because he was doing ok, and she felt his boredom was because of his PGness. A year later, I'm still on to the same questions. She's unsure, basically, because she's never tested anyone so high.

She started doing the Nepsy-II on him earlier this week, but we're putting it on hold as he's very unwilling to continue. FWIW, he keeps saying it's his really strong inner voice that "keeps me very occupied with other thoughts".

We live in outside of the US, so that's going to be a very long commute to anywhere.