Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Testing question re: DAS-II

I know a gifted female Aspie who played imaginative games with younger playmates. She followed their lead when it came to inventing interactions between the characters, but contributed a lot of imagination and creativity to building the worlds those characters inhabited.

When she was four, she would respond to puppets as if they were real. I don't think that was an indication that she was participating in the imaginary play, though. It was more like she took the puppets literally, and to her they *were* real.

What would be the advantage of seeking out an Asperger's diagnosis? We are planning to home school as it stands now. She will receive speech therapy and occupational therapy privately.

I may simply be that from most peoples perspectives a known quantity is better than an unknown one. At some point, you are probably going to need to know one way or another.

Aside from the idea that knowing what the issue is helps you be more tactical in solving it...

If it's Asperger's you may want to look into ABA or other treatments based in behavioral psychology that have been shown to improve autistic behavior. You would definitely want to get some kind of social skills training in place. The speech therapist might do this, but they may or may not be the right person for the job if it's an autism spectrum disorder. The OT may be helpful for some of the sensory-type things, but if there are social or theory of mind deficits, an OT is not usually equipped to work on those.

DeeDee

Actual scores according to the report:

Verbal cluster: 143, "Very High" @ the 99.8%tile
Subtest t-score (mean of 50)
Verbal Comprehension: 81, 99.9 %tile
Naming vocabulary: 60, 84th %tile

Nonverbal Reasoning: 94 "Average" 34th %tile
Subtest t-score
Picture similarities: 45, 31st percentile
Matrices (visual pattern completion) 48, 42 %tile

Spatial Cluster: 109 "average" 73rd %tile
Subtest t-scores
Pattern construction: 59, 82nd %tile
Copying: 51, 54th %tile

On Autism: "Given her appropriate social interaction, use of eye contact, joint attention, gesturing and pretend play, she did not meet criteria for an autism spectrum disorder. DD's social, emotional and behavioral is significant for the presence of third cluster behaviors, but without the communicative and social deficits that would be required for a diagnosis of any autism spectrum disorder."

As before, if there is any new light that can be shined with this more in depth information please share!