Psychologist specialized in giftedness stereotyping AS?

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As I was reading this article from a psychologist specialized in giftedness I started wondering if it is not this psychologist who mis-diagnose children who do have AS instead of the other way around. I don't know if he has a lot of expertise with Asperger, but he seems to base his opinion and/or diagnosis on stereotypes, on his preconceived (and limited it seems) idea of what a person with AS is like. He seems to think, among other things, that an Aspie can never have a conversation with someone (which I disagree with, a tendancy to talk "at" doesn't mean you can never talk "with" someone).

The article is not very long, if you have the patience to read it I would like to know what you think.
http://www.sengifted.org/articles_couns ... rder.shtml

Here are a few quotes from the article:

yes! People with AS care about others and if a child doesn't have asperger's then he most likely (but not always) would be able to show his concern for others! If a 13 year old knows more about what she's saying than she does, she probably shouldn't be licensed!

I agree with you.

There are interesting articles on this, though I lost the links. Basically gifted NT kids behave very NT if you put them in a room with other gifted NT kids or with adults who treat them as peers rather than children. Aspie kids won't, including gifted aspies.

But when you put a gifted NT kid in a room of normal NT kids then he can't relate to them, doesn't share any of their interests, might even be more socially advanced then his peers. This causes him to withdrawl from his peers. It'd be like putting a 20-year-old in a room of 5-year-olds for months on end and forcing him to pretend like the 5-year-olds are his peers.

I think that's what the article is getting at but doesn't do a good job of it.

Yes some gifted children act somewhat like adults, and would be at ease discussing with adults and with other gifted NTs, but I think this article describes specifically gifted children with AS traits (or at least who seem to have AS traits), but it is full of stereotypes and generalisation, for example the "concern for others" part and not always knowing how to express it ... this description applies to many Aspies just as well as NTs, to affirm that people with Aspergers never feel concerned for anyone is a generalisation and a stereotype. The author of the article seem to think that NT = concerned for others and AS = never concerned for others.

The idea that AS kids don't feel concern for others is pretty ridiculous, and I say that having known dozens of AS people, both kids and adults. They might have trouble figuring out what somebody else is feeling, but once they know, they're as compassionate as any NT... in some cases, even more so, to the point of being over-empathetic. One woman with an AS/Borderline Personality combination had the problem of feeling so much empathy that she lost her sense of self when she was with other people. Sure, Aspies can be jerks, but so can NTs. And not knowing is just not the same as not caring. Even in cases like mine, where there's very little instinctive emotion-copying, compassion seems to be unrelated to how much you pick up from other people.

A primary distinction. A psychopath or sociopath can figure out what other people are feeling but it will not effect his own feelings. An autistic will have trouble figuring it out, but once that is done, may actually feel it so intensely that they have a meltdown.

The author makes a little semantic stumble on this point and doesn't even realize it. But it's very telling. He says, "a lack of social or emotional reciprocity is characteristic of Aspergers disorder while gifted children most often show a tremendous concern for others. They may not always know how to express it appropriately but the concern is there."

Does somebody who writes for a gifted website really not know what the word "reciprocity" means? I doubt it. I think he hopped right over the DSM's implication that children with Aspergers Syndrome feel concern for others but don't absorb the social norms for how to reciprocate it in his hurry to distance "gifted" from "Aspergers". After all, by his own admission, these gifted children "may not always know how to express it appropriately". Is that not trouble with reciprocity? I'm not sayng gifted=aspergers=gifted. But I think he's (subconsciously?) exaggerating the differences in order to put some distance between the kids represented by that website and kids with Aspergers.

Last edited by Janissy on 13 Dec 2010, 5:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Overall, I think it's a good article. Yes, it's grating to be told that we have no concern for others, but that's a small piece of his article and not the main theme.

I totally fit what the author is talking about. I was "weird" in class and "weird" in gifted class. It didn't matter how brilliant the people I was with, I was still weird, socially disjointed, not connected with my peers the same way they were connected with each other, and often bullied.

The big difference I noticed between gifted classes and regular classes was that gifted kids would mock me verbally while regular kids would throw rocks at me and hit me with boards and bottles and fists and feet. But I was still very much the odd duck in both settings. I *am* gfted, but I also have Asperger's so the test of putting me with my intellectual peers demonstrated that there was something more than just giftedness at play.

But there are kids today who are getting diagnosed with ADHD and Asperger's who do not have those conditions but who are gifted and reacting to the underchallenging settings they find themselves in. It's very important to pay attention to what the author is talking about because the behavior may appear to be the same but the treatment is radically different. Kids who are "just" gifted don't need social skills classes and may actually behave even worse in those classes because they are still dealing with the fundamental problem in their case, that being that they are not being intellectually challenged. Gifted kids need gifted classes. Kids with Asperger's need something else (although if they are also gifted, they also need gifted classes.)

I thought the article was very simplistic. And it bothered me how they kept calling it "Asperger´s Disorder". The implication was that gifted was "good", AS is "bad".

I read a book about giftedness recently- (well, I read about half of it, before the book started to irritate me and I threw it away in disgust- long story). After reading about it, I don´t see how someone can get it confused with Asperger´s syndrome anyway; (aside from the fact that some people with AS may also be gifted at the same time). Otherwise, there seemed to be some pretty major distinctions. So, who exactly are these doctors who are "diagnosing people with Asperger´s" when they are really "gifted" instead?

I agree with the OP, this guy seems to have a very limited view of Asoerger´s. According to this article, I must be gifted instead of AS. Now if I can only figure out in exactly what way I am "gifted", I´ll be all set!

A little reading on Dabrowski's theories of over-excitabilities among the gifted will make it painfully obvious how people can mistake profound giftedness with Asperger's. (In fact, for a few years before my husband pointed Asperger's out to me, I was collecting a binder of information about giftedness in children and adults because I was sure I had finally found the answer to why I'd had certain problems all my life. Once I learned about Asperger's, it was obvious that, even though I am highly gifted, that is not the full story of what underlies my issues.)

Here's as good a starting place as any:
http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/dabrowski.htm

From that page, this link is a good layman's summary:
http://www.stephanietolan.com/dabrowskis.htm

From that link, some interesting quotes:

"Dabrowski talked about OE's - over-excitabilities ("superstimulatabilities"), and how the gifted were extremely sensitive in a variety of areas. It's a stimulus-response difference from the norms. It means that in these 5 areas a person reacts more strongly than normal for a longer period than normal to a stimulus that may be very small. It involves not just psychological factors but central nervous system sensitivity."

"sometimes nervous tics"

"Here's the "cut the label out of the shirt" demand, the child who limps as if with a broken leg when a sock seam is twisted."

"The kids tend to be sensitive to bright lights [...] harsh sounds"

"enjoy following a line of complex reasoning, figuring things out"

"Unable to find close and deep friends"

There is a LOT of cross-over between profound giftedness and Asperger's Syndrome, in my opinion. Like I said, For several years, I thought all my issues could be chalked up to having an I.Q. more than four standard deviations above the mean. It *almost* fit. The only reason I dropped it in favor of Asperger's (besides getting an official diagnosis fo AS) is because giftedness was a 90% match for my symptom profile while Asperger's was a 100% match. This is because there is a HUGE amount of cross-over in traits between the two. It is completely understandable to me how experts in giftedness would see only giftedness and experts in Asperger's would see only Asperger's. To be truly discerning, a professional really needs to be an expert in BOTH giftedness and Asperger's.

As you said its not the main theme of the article, however everything he says about Aspergers is very stereotyped and a generalisation, and this is what bothered the heck out of me. I think with his idea of what Aspergers is he could easily mis-diagnose children who indeed have AS, simply because the child shows concern for others for example, or because he/she can hold a conversation, etc, at least from my understanding of his statements, he thinks Aspies can't ever feel nor show concern for others, can't ever hold a conversation, and a lot of other stereotypes and generalisation.

Like Evan, or the son described by the mother, they may (or may not) have many AS traits, but it seems people are more then happy to get diagnosed with anything else BUT Aspergers, as if it was something to be ashamed of, and this really p**** me off. They would rather get diagnosis of (again for example) dyspraxia, social anxiety, etc, then AS (in any form, including Asperger).

For example look at this comment from one of the posters (on this page: http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/ ... 455/1.html )

At least she mentions that stereotypes are not fair (I agree with her about that), but unless I am mistaken, she really seems to have been upset by the suggestion by her mother that her son could be autistic. I doubt she would have been as upset if her mother had suggested, for example, that her son had a sleep disorder.

I'm on the main e-list for people with sleep disorders and I can say that, no, most parents are quite distressed when they realize their child has a sleep disorder. I've seen the same level of concern and grief there as I see from parents of children on the spectrum. No one wants their child to have a condition that will make life much more difficult for them.

I guess I have to agree with your last sentence, however I tend to think that if a child has many of the characteristics you mention well he may just have ASD but they have such a negative idea of it that they (psychologists) prefer to "blame" their issues to anything else BUT Aspergers/ASD, and I still wonder how much experience all these psychologists specialized in giftedness have with Aspergers and Autism generally, and how many AS traits some of the gifted children may have, obviously in certain cases enough to be "mistaken" with AS ... or could the mistake be not to diagnose Aspergers ...

The "complex line of reasoning" and "unable to find close and deep friends" can indeed be attibuted to either giftedness or AS, however there is many other characteristics supposedly related to giftedness (like the sensitivity to bright lights for example) that could very well be due to AS. As I mentioned I doubt many Aspies have all the characteristics of Aspergers, you say your profile fits AS 100% ... I may be wrong but I think you have some of the possible characteristics of AS, not all, just like you don't have all the characteristics attributed to giftedness (I am not saying this to be rude or mean). In other words if people had to have 100% of the possible traits of AS to get a diagnosis of AS, no one would ever be diagnosed with AS, or very rarely.

I understand all this, but the diagnosis of Aspergers didn't change any of your traits or issues, you are the same person you were before the diagnosis.

But the perception of the word "Aspergers" (and Autism) is a problem with a lot of people, when you tell people you are on the autism spectrum, unless they are informed they will immediately think something negative (as in something to be ashamed of). This is a big issue because for a lot of people the correct diagnosis of AS could help them and help family members understand them a lot better.

About the level of concern and grief, yes of course any possible issue can cause concern, but what I mean is the reaction is not only "concern" but also she seems to have been somewhat unwilling to at least look into the possibility of AS. I could be wrong in assuming this, I can't be sure, I get this feeling from the way she says "my own mother suggested ... ", as if she was insulted that her mother could think her son had austism.

I am trying to explain what I mean but maybe I am not very clear. It is as if you suggest to someone that they may have some AS traits or that their child may have AS traits, it is perceived almost as an insult, while if you mention sleep disorder there will be concern yes, but usually people won't react as if they were insulted.

Here is a concrete example with my stepson. He has trouble executing certain tasks unless he is given specific instructions, however my husband refuses to see this and when I tell him he should help his son with the task he replies "he knows how to do it, he's not stupid" ... well instead of reacting this way maybe he would understand that it has nothing to do with being "stupid" and that his son could use his help for this task (or at least specific instructions), so that he wouldn't have to go through 3 hours of anger and frustration trying to execute a task that seemed very simple to my husband. This is only one example where a diagnosis of AS (or at least be willing to look into it) could be very helpful, it wouln't change anything to my stepson's personality or issues, but it sure would help his dad understand him.

Last edited by Shadi2 on 13 Dec 2010, 11:41 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I appear not to have communicated effectively.

What I meant to convey was that Asperger's explains my symptom profile 100%. Asperger's explains everything about me that does not fit the standard expectations of a human being in my society. It explains 100% and leaves nothing unusual or abnormal about me unexplained.

I was not trying to say that I have every "characteristic" attributed to Asperger's. I was trying to say that the formal definition of Asperger's explains every problem, issue, and difference I experience in life. I am not speaking of Asperger's as a list of characteristics, I am speaking of it as a clnical diagnosis which has explained my life very neatly with no loose ends left unaccounted for.