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Children's tests used on adult assessment?

Technophobe23

I've raised this before but so far, I still don;t know what the situation actually is.  

On my first assessment (clinical psychologist), I was give two tests that seemed to me to be designed for young children. One was a picture book, with castles and a dragon, with no words. The task was to try to tell a story as the pages went by.

The other test was a small collection of objects placed on the desk (eg: a Matchbox model car, a rubber band, a coin, some wool, a stick - that sort of thing anyway). The task was to use some/all of the objects to construct a sstory.

At my second meeting with the clin psych (CP from now on to save typing!), I asked whether they had been tests designed for children and I was told that they were not - they were designed fro adults, and the tests for children are simpler.  That's what I was told.

The CP told me that although, at out 1st meeting, I had shown some signs of AS I had also shown some quite strong negative signs. When I asked in what way, I was told that I had done "too well" in the tests.  I did say that after 55 years I have learned quite a lot in life, and that they weren't exactly difficult. But no way of knowing what imprression saying that made.

So, to get to my point / question:

Does anyone know about these tests?  Can anyone say whether they are meant for children or adults? Does anyone think (as I do) that for a CP to apparently be leaning toiwards a negative diagnosis based largely upon being too good at these tests just wouldn't be right?

Somebody must know the answer! I've been trying to find anything on Google but I'm at giving up point - not a thing I can find.  I want to know because if they are aimed at children (and they certainly seem like it to me, though I'll keep an open mind), then their validty must be questionable applied to me.

Parents

  • Technophobe23 said:

    What about map reading? Are people with AS meant to be unable to read maps?  Because to read a map is to interpret the lines and colours and symbols, using one's imagination, to create a mental picture of the landscape and where one is in it. If you can't do this, a map is no use to you!

    I'm just challenging this idea that AS means an absence of that kind of imagination. The hairband as a pond example seems little different to a thin black outline with blue infill for a pond. Neither are ponds. But we know what the symbols mean (don't we?).

    I also question whether making up stoiries as a child, using bits and pieces gleaned from previously encountered stories, can be called pure palgiarism or even copying. Surely, most stories are exactly that? Think about all the detective stories, all the Western films, the Mills & Boon tat - they're pretty much all the same stories, just re-worked and mixed up a bit. Same with music - very few songs/tunes are truly original. Some are of course, but generally, we are all influenced more than we tend to realise by our environment, including all the previous human input into it.

    That's how I see it anyway. 

    You're confusing a deficit in imagination with an absense of imagination. Nobody has suggested that people with ASD have no imagination at all, just that it is common for that imagination to be restricted by rigid patterns of thought.

    Maps are typically very logical in form, for example, they use a 'key' which tells you what various symbols mean, in addition to this it is perfectly reasonable to assume that if you are knowingly looking at a pictoral representation of a landscape you could rationally expect to see things on there which represent roads, rail lines and bodies of water and it is not too challenging for anyone to associate the colour blue with water, these things would require a fairly low-level of imagination/flexible thinking. On the otherhand associating one object (eg; a hairband) with another object which doesn't look like, isn't related to nor connected in any real sense (eg; a lake) requires a larger degree of flexible thinking. The key to the issue and what is really being measured, is not so much how much imagination someone has, but how rigid their thought patterns are.

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  • Technophobe23 said:

    What about map reading? Are people with AS meant to be unable to read maps?  Because to read a map is to interpret the lines and colours and symbols, using one's imagination, to create a mental picture of the landscape and where one is in it. If you can't do this, a map is no use to you!

    I'm just challenging this idea that AS means an absence of that kind of imagination. The hairband as a pond example seems little different to a thin black outline with blue infill for a pond. Neither are ponds. But we know what the symbols mean (don't we?).

    I also question whether making up stoiries as a child, using bits and pieces gleaned from previously encountered stories, can be called pure palgiarism or even copying. Surely, most stories are exactly that? Think about all the detective stories, all the Western films, the Mills & Boon tat - they're pretty much all the same stories, just re-worked and mixed up a bit. Same with music - very few songs/tunes are truly original. Some are of course, but generally, we are all influenced more than we tend to realise by our environment, including all the previous human input into it.

    That's how I see it anyway. 

    You're confusing a deficit in imagination with an absense of imagination. Nobody has suggested that people with ASD have no imagination at all, just that it is common for that imagination to be restricted by rigid patterns of thought.

    Maps are typically very logical in form, for example, they use a 'key' which tells you what various symbols mean, in addition to this it is perfectly reasonable to assume that if you are knowingly looking at a pictoral representation of a landscape you could rationally expect to see things on there which represent roads, rail lines and bodies of water and it is not too challenging for anyone to associate the colour blue with water, these things would require a fairly low-level of imagination/flexible thinking. On the otherhand associating one object (eg; a hairband) with another object which doesn't look like, isn't related to nor connected in any real sense (eg; a lake) requires a larger degree of flexible thinking. The key to the issue and what is really being measured, is not so much how much imagination someone has, but how rigid their thought patterns are.

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