Giftedness vs. Aspergers

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http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/EJ860954.pdf

Interesting. According to this paper, I lean(ed) more towards the Gifted side when it comes to Memory and Attention, more towards the Aspie side with regards to Motor Skills (and Social/Emotional to a lesser extent) and the rest is mixed.

Here is a difference that I noticed from personal experience. I was in Gifted and Talented (G/T)in school. It did not seem like the other kids G/T had any difficulties socially. They all had several friends.

I wonder if many gifted have some issues with friendships due to their interests being different than most kids, but do not have problems with social cues. However many of the kids in G/T were actually the popular kids.

There was the Terman study of gifted children--a very long-term study. The general conclusion is that gifted children tend to be gifted socially as well. I don't have references but it's so famous you could probably find it through Google.

But that doesn't prevent autism and giftedness from occurring together, or just giftedness alone in someone with average or low-average social skills. And some gifted people aren't socially delayed, but they are eccentric--people who just don't fit in and don't care to, who do their own thing, interact with others in a friendly manner, but don't try to fit themselves into society. Psychologists don't see eccentricity as a problem because it doesn't cause distress or dysfunction to anyone.

Me--I was a gifted kid, autistic, and eccentric. Triple whammy. It did help me soak up fewer of the "You are inferior because you are different" messages I was constantly bombarded with. Being eccentric helps with that because you care less than most about what others think of you.

I was in the first High Honors class in Junior High School (currently called Middle School) which was our district's G&T program, but many of the kids who got into High Honors were not the kids from the Elementary (Lower) G&T program, which was odd. We took a test to get in to the program and it was a nice ego boost. In retrospect though, I was an oddball even in the nerdy science class. There was another oddball besides me, but my understanding is that he is a closeted gay and still is in the closet, and that's the reason he acted so awkwardly (his discomfort over being gay, not being gay itself). As mentioned, the other kids in class didn't seem to struggle socially as I did. I had one friend in class and somehow managed to piss her off so that we were no longer friends. Then I found another friend who was very much the opposite of a nerd (a "burnout" as we called them), and managed to piss her off too by paying a compliment about her flat chest being a marker of a gymnast, which I didn't construe as being rude (as I was similarly flat-chested) but she did. Oh boy, those years were pretty painful.

Thanks for posting this.

I come in on both sides of Table 1, a bit. They described me as gifted in school back in the '70s. I don't think the concept of Asperger's/HFA existed then.

In memory and attention, the first four items in Gifted seem right, but for the last one more the AS side.

In speech and language a mix, a bit more on the gifted side.

In social and emotional, I would be more on the Asperger's side.

In behavioral a bit of mix, more on the Asperger's side, though never a fan of rules. (Authority almost always seemed stupid and abusive)

Motor skills: totally on the asperger's side.

It's a pretty good list, but I think it might be a better idea to assign point values to these rather than just to count them up and see how many fall on each side. If a child that young is reasoning abstractly, there's a pretty good chance that they're at least above average intellectually. On the flip-side, if a child is having a hard time understanding the emotions of others, that's obviously more serious than not wanting to share achievements. It also helps to tell if someone might be both seriously Autistic and gifted.

I think I was both autistic and gifted.

I remember as a kid boasting about the things I could do, and then kids getting mad at me about the boasting. So then, I became the opposite and couldn't accept any compliments for fear that I'd be ostracized--but then the kids didn't like me because I kept shooting down their compliments. I was then accused of fishing for more compliments, which was equally Bad somehow. I just couldn't figure it out--it was a No Win situation for me.

I'm not gifted by any sense of the word. It's only hindered my life in terms of my motor skills, academics, and of course, social.