Something therapist said during pre-assessement?????

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Good morning!

OK so I had my very first pre-assessement appointement yesterday. It didn't go too badly, but I cannot help feeling in my gut that the psychologist was a little dubious. I live in France where we are very much behind in this subject, and I am a high-masking woman, so I'm already worried that my symptoms are too subtle, esp since I have ADHD and CPTSD, and it seems easier for docs to put it all down to that.

Anyway, one thing she said at the end of the session which I found confusing : "did you join in other children's imaginary games when you were a child?"

The truth is I don't remember "joining in" per say, but I do remember clearly being the one making up the games and instructing everyone on their roles. Either that or I just went to read or do some crafts on my own.

Does she mean to say that children with ASD level 1 (Asperger's, which is what I suspect I may have) don't have any imagination? Are not able to create an imaginary life? I had an INSANELY rich imagination. That's what being on your own planet is all about, isn't it? I don't understand. Can you guys tell me about your own experiences? And how u dealt with that question during an assessement?

Thanks!! !!

I had no lack of imagination, what so ever. I played imaginary games, both my own and joined others, as a kid. We were cowboys, knights, out-laws on the run, bank robbers, drinking apple juice from a bottle and pretended we were tough guys drinking whiskey and that kind of stuff. I don't doubt there are autistic peoople, perhaps a lot of them, that have a lack of imagination but far from everyone. There are autistic fiction writers and actors like Anthony Hopkins to prove my point.

The question has to do with two things: socializing and abstraction/ ToM.

ASD is about issues with socializing as a central feature.
Part of this about knowing other people may think differently than yourself, or even hold beliefs that are different than your beliefs, or are false beliefs.

My son is diagnosed ASD and had a lot of trouble with some high level college classes that contained abstract concepts as a core part of the class.

In his letter of introduction (which he wrote and started to present to each class’s teacher) he said “I do better with several abstract steps, than one big abstract leap.

I don’t think the question is the kind you would find in an professional assessment instrument (sometimes called a test).

I played a lot of imaginary games as a kid with my sister. Sometimes with other kids.

I am diagnosed ASD by a specialist in ASD diagnosis inbthe USA. A private practitioner with a PhD. I don’t know how things might work in France. Do you have socialized medicine?

@Fenn By socialized medecine do you mean universal healthcare?
Yes we do, but it's probably not quite the idealized version you might have heard Social Security pays back 70% of most costs unless you have a disability, in which case they cover 100% of the cost in relation w/ disability. But it's still worth getting private insurance here to get the 30% extra covered, and because waiting times in public hospitals are often totally outrageous so with private insurance you can see private doctors and still get paid back. It's just that everything, from appointments to treatments cost a lot less here, so it's less of a financial burden both for us and for the state.

Anyway, thanks for your reply. I am seeing a clinical psychologist who specializes in assessing neurodevelopmental issues. But as I said research in ASD here is years behind, and I am a high masking adult woman, so I am trying to be as well prepared as I can for the assessment. I understand better what they are looking for, thank you. It's also good to know there are various levels of "talent" for imagination.

I had an imagination but I don't remember ever confusing it with reality.

I'm one of those autistics who has always had trouble with imagination. When I was a kid my sisters had to direct me in their games/role play. I just didn't get it. When we went to school, I'd try to hang out with my twin and her friends but she would usually tell me to go away. She knew I wouldn't understand the games they were playing.

It's affected me as an adult as well. I used to take part in Star Trek Adventures, a tabletop role-playing game. When I was expected to be in character, I'd freeze and not know what to say. I needed imagination and I didn't have it. Luckily the Game Master is a good friend and she directed me.

What the therapist is asking about doesn't have to do with having an imagination or a rich imagination. The question is about joining in imaginary play. For instance, children will often play together by assuming roles, (like I'm the mom, you're the dad, she's the daughter etc.) and then enacting a scene. That's what the therapist is asking about: did you find it easy or natural to join in such role-playing types of play. People with ASD tend not to do this, but that doesn't mean they lack imagination. You're focusing on the imagination part of the question, but that is not the question. The "joining in" is the question.

Personally I had a very rich imaginative life as a kid, but it didn't involve sharing it with other kids.

On various other sites I've read that one of the autism symptoms in kids is not doing pretend playing. I never did pretend play. I'm constantly daydreaming but my daydreams have been mostly limited to TV, video-games, music, & replaying various situations & conversations I've had in my life. So my vote in the poll is Not At All. I'm not sure how acurate this is for autistics in general though. A bit of autistics are nerds or geeks & nerds & geeks are stereotyped to be into larping & cosplaying.

Well...the Psychologist who did my assessment asked us (my bride, actually) to ask my-then-still-alive Dad whether I joined in to that kind of things with the other kids. He said I didn't, that I wasn't like that.

I couldn't tell you because my memory of the past is very poor.

I do remember playing with toy soldiers in the bookcase in my bedroom. I always knew they were just toys.

Autism is a spectrum.

One of the features that varies from “a lot” to “a little” (and many variations “in the middle”, or “in-between”) is “abstraction”.

The word “abstraction” itself requires a certain amount of abstraction to understand, creating a bit of a chicken-or-the-egg type of problem.

People on the spectrum may “take things literally”. This may be “a lot” or “a little” depending on the individual with autism’s exact neurological nature, and experience/environment.

Some people on the spectrum may also have a related problem with understanding that others may have thoughts, understanding, and emotions different from their own.

One experiment that was done to try and understand this was called the “Sally-Anne test”.

“The Sally–Anne test is a psychological test, used in developmental psychology to measure a person's social cognitive ability to attribute false beliefs to others.[1] Based on the earlier ground-breaking study by Wimmer and Perner (1983),[2] the Sally–Anne test was so named by Simon Baron-Cohen, Alan M. Leslie, and Uta Frith (1985) who developed the test further;[3] in 1988, Leslie and Frith repeated the experiment with human actors (rather than dolls) and found similar results.[4]



[ Image Caption: ] The original Sally–Anne cartoon used in the test by Baron-Cohen, Leslie and Frith (1985)”

Source: Wikipedia - Sally-Anne test

Interesting.

I think that you could have said that "the SHORT answer to that question is 'yes' I joined in children's games...with abandon even."

I have seen people on this site say that "never knew what to do when other children launched into pretend games".

But then you could have elaborated and said "I usually was the one instigating the said games...and was the movie director and casting director etc".

NT have contradictory notions about autistics...some think that we are self involved in fantasy worlds ...others think that we lack any imagination. And both kinds of individuals have gotten the autism diagnosis. So, in a sense, both contradictory stereotypes are true. And maybe the therapist wanted to see which kind of autistic you were.

I was kinda like you. I would join in to games. But usually I like to dictate my own creative vision to everyone else. LOL!

I had an active imagination, but it was mostly me imagining myself doing grandiose things. I didn't really see the point of wanting to pretend to be a cowboy shooting people, but on a good day, I could be gotten to play along.

A kid lived near me who had the garden behind his house divided into elaborate zones. Playing some sort of game based on which zone you were in was sort of interesting. As the zones were imaginary, I suppose you could call that imaginary play.

I often engaged in imaginary play with other kids when I was a kid. It was what my friends and I mostly did. They seemed to grow out of it way before I did. As an adult, I often retreat into my fantasy world.