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Really? Idiot Savant? Really?
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<blockquote data-quote="Marguerite" data-source="post: 324488" data-attributes="member: 1991"><p>Yep. Good plan, Audrey. And after you make that reminder, you could then say, "Perhaps I could share with you the most recent understanding of this phenomenon, it's now called 'savantism' without the 'idiot' because it is now recognised as being more widespread and occurring in peopleacross a wide spread of abilities. And nobody uses the term 'idiot' these days with reference to someone of low IQ."</p><p></p><p>I also reinforce - those in the past who were assessed as having an IQ of less that 20 - the test should never have been applied to them, it simply is not able to assess anybody whose presentation varies so widely from the group who were part of the original spectru of people bing assessed (in development of IQ tests). Often the losw score is because the person is non-verbal at time of testing, or for various reasons does not respond. IQ testing is highly subjective and very dependent on the subject being cooperative.</p><p></p><p>An example I've given before - a neighbour kid aged 2 who was brain-damaged after a near-drowning. The doctors assessed this child as "vegetative state" and said he was so badly brain-damaged he was never gonig to respond to anyone. The dad said, "No, I'm sure you're srong, I'm sure he turned his head and turned his eyes when I came into the room." The boy would respond to his father asking him to look left, look right etc but not to the doctors.</p><p>The difference? First, the boy was recognising his father's voice. Second (and far more important) - the dad was talking to the boy in his first language, Spanish. The boy was bilingual. Or rather, had been. However, he appered to have lost his ability to respond to English.</p><p>A few weeks later the boy was home from hospital and the doctors still considering the boy to be now seriously intellectually hadicapped. I was babysitting for a few hours (he also had an older sister who was at the time very demanding) and at one point the boy began to whimper so I went over to sit with him. His eyes went atraight to my face and he was quiet and making eye contact while I talked to him. His mother had left a cartoon video on for him but he was not paying attention to it, he was paying attention to me. Then the cartoon changed (it had been on Scooby Doo, it went back to Roadrunner) and the boy's eyes went from me to the TV screen. I had been dismissed - he had only whimpered because he was bored with the cartoon!</p><p></p><p>A week later we were at a party there and at 10 pm it was bedtime for the boy. He was whimpering and sounded tired. I tried to talk to him and he wasn't interested. So I tried the only Spanish I knew - I counted his fingers. He shut up his whining and watched me count his fingers. I tried it in English - he began to whine again, so I switched back to Spanish. He shut up.</p><p>That boy was NOT intellectually handicapped. But the testing the doctors were doing, made a number of false assumptions.</p><p>1) They assumed he understood English - he no longer did (that was rectified over the next few months).</p><p>2) They assumed he was willingly cooperative - he wasn't, he was only a little boy and bored with what they wanted. He didn't know it was important.</p><p>3) There were cultural differences between the doctors and the boy's family - different accents, different ways of looking at things. The boy was choosing to connect only to those people he knew and with whom he felt most comfortable.</p><p></p><p>Years later, the boy is still non-verbal but using a computer to communicate. In comparing this boy with difficult child 3, it was interesting - the neighbour boy had no communication disorder, his capability with language has been age-equivalent. But he has no speech any more.</p><p>difficult child 3, on the other hand, had vocalisation (speech) but did not have language. language was acquired laboriously over the next few years.</p><p></p><p>To try to IQ test a non-verbal child and expect the results to be relevant, is idiotic. Unfortunately it is done. The degree of language delay means that a child could be considered capable fo being IQ tested (because the child is now able to respond verbally) but due to the delay, there are still practical handicaps that are independent of intelligence. Language capability is NOT necessarily connected to intelligence. And as the neighbour boy demonstrated, neither is speech.</p><p></p><p>difficult child 1 did not have language dleay but he also 'failed' his first IQ test because he waqs too anxious to stay focussed on the task. He became too anxious and the test had to be stopped. But it was scored as if he had completed the test. When the rsult showed that difficult child 1 would not be capable of completing tasks that he actually WAS doing in class, the school counsellor (a different one to my story in a previous post) attacked me and blamed my "pushing the child to achieve" for the disparity between difficult child 1's observed ability to function being greater than his IQ score would indicate as possible.</p><p></p><p>In other words - according to the IQ score, difficult child 1 was IQ about 70 and should have been unable to do simple arithmetic, but in class he was performing ner the top of the class. The school counsellor said this was only because I was forcing him to learn maths in order to present as smarter than he really was.</p><p>This is not possible - if difficult child 1 had really been as 'dumb' as his IQ score indicated, no amount of pressuring on my part would have produced such a prodigious performer.</p><p></p><p>difficult child 3 has also had widely differing IQ scores. I trust the ones done privately with careful consideration. The school counsellor tested him (the last one without my knowledge or consent) and averaged out the vastly differing sub-scores (something the tests especially state must not be done). So difficult child 3 scored 6 in Coding, and 17 in Verbal Performance. Similarwide spreads in other scores - when they were all averaged, his score came to 105. The school counsellor then said, "He's doing really well, topping the class in Maths and getting 100% in comprehension exercises, which is wonderful considering he's not as smart as you told me he was."</p><p></p><p>I pointed to an earlier assessment we'd had done, one which was designed to test children with high-functioning autism and which had scored difficult child 3 as having an IQ ranging from 135 to 142. I pointed to the confidence limits (any test with confidence limits is one which acknowledges it's own chance of inaccuracy). The school counsellor looked blank. Since we were leaving mainstream at this point, I just shrugged and walked away.</p><p></p><p>Some battles are not worth fighting. This applies not just to our kids, but to officials as well!</p><p></p><p>Between us all on this site, we are doing a good job re-educating the world!</p><p></p><p>Marg</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Marguerite, post: 324488, member: 1991"] Yep. Good plan, Audrey. And after you make that reminder, you could then say, "Perhaps I could share with you the most recent understanding of this phenomenon, it's now called 'savantism' without the 'idiot' because it is now recognised as being more widespread and occurring in peopleacross a wide spread of abilities. And nobody uses the term 'idiot' these days with reference to someone of low IQ." I also reinforce - those in the past who were assessed as having an IQ of less that 20 - the test should never have been applied to them, it simply is not able to assess anybody whose presentation varies so widely from the group who were part of the original spectru of people bing assessed (in development of IQ tests). Often the losw score is because the person is non-verbal at time of testing, or for various reasons does not respond. IQ testing is highly subjective and very dependent on the subject being cooperative. An example I've given before - a neighbour kid aged 2 who was brain-damaged after a near-drowning. The doctors assessed this child as "vegetative state" and said he was so badly brain-damaged he was never gonig to respond to anyone. The dad said, "No, I'm sure you're srong, I'm sure he turned his head and turned his eyes when I came into the room." The boy would respond to his father asking him to look left, look right etc but not to the doctors. The difference? First, the boy was recognising his father's voice. Second (and far more important) - the dad was talking to the boy in his first language, Spanish. The boy was bilingual. Or rather, had been. However, he appered to have lost his ability to respond to English. A few weeks later the boy was home from hospital and the doctors still considering the boy to be now seriously intellectually hadicapped. I was babysitting for a few hours (he also had an older sister who was at the time very demanding) and at one point the boy began to whimper so I went over to sit with him. His eyes went atraight to my face and he was quiet and making eye contact while I talked to him. His mother had left a cartoon video on for him but he was not paying attention to it, he was paying attention to me. Then the cartoon changed (it had been on Scooby Doo, it went back to Roadrunner) and the boy's eyes went from me to the TV screen. I had been dismissed - he had only whimpered because he was bored with the cartoon! A week later we were at a party there and at 10 pm it was bedtime for the boy. He was whimpering and sounded tired. I tried to talk to him and he wasn't interested. So I tried the only Spanish I knew - I counted his fingers. He shut up his whining and watched me count his fingers. I tried it in English - he began to whine again, so I switched back to Spanish. He shut up. That boy was NOT intellectually handicapped. But the testing the doctors were doing, made a number of false assumptions. 1) They assumed he understood English - he no longer did (that was rectified over the next few months). 2) They assumed he was willingly cooperative - he wasn't, he was only a little boy and bored with what they wanted. He didn't know it was important. 3) There were cultural differences between the doctors and the boy's family - different accents, different ways of looking at things. The boy was choosing to connect only to those people he knew and with whom he felt most comfortable. Years later, the boy is still non-verbal but using a computer to communicate. In comparing this boy with difficult child 3, it was interesting - the neighbour boy had no communication disorder, his capability with language has been age-equivalent. But he has no speech any more. difficult child 3, on the other hand, had vocalisation (speech) but did not have language. language was acquired laboriously over the next few years. To try to IQ test a non-verbal child and expect the results to be relevant, is idiotic. Unfortunately it is done. The degree of language delay means that a child could be considered capable fo being IQ tested (because the child is now able to respond verbally) but due to the delay, there are still practical handicaps that are independent of intelligence. Language capability is NOT necessarily connected to intelligence. And as the neighbour boy demonstrated, neither is speech. difficult child 1 did not have language dleay but he also 'failed' his first IQ test because he waqs too anxious to stay focussed on the task. He became too anxious and the test had to be stopped. But it was scored as if he had completed the test. When the rsult showed that difficult child 1 would not be capable of completing tasks that he actually WAS doing in class, the school counsellor (a different one to my story in a previous post) attacked me and blamed my "pushing the child to achieve" for the disparity between difficult child 1's observed ability to function being greater than his IQ score would indicate as possible. In other words - according to the IQ score, difficult child 1 was IQ about 70 and should have been unable to do simple arithmetic, but in class he was performing ner the top of the class. The school counsellor said this was only because I was forcing him to learn maths in order to present as smarter than he really was. This is not possible - if difficult child 1 had really been as 'dumb' as his IQ score indicated, no amount of pressuring on my part would have produced such a prodigious performer. difficult child 3 has also had widely differing IQ scores. I trust the ones done privately with careful consideration. The school counsellor tested him (the last one without my knowledge or consent) and averaged out the vastly differing sub-scores (something the tests especially state must not be done). So difficult child 3 scored 6 in Coding, and 17 in Verbal Performance. Similarwide spreads in other scores - when they were all averaged, his score came to 105. The school counsellor then said, "He's doing really well, topping the class in Maths and getting 100% in comprehension exercises, which is wonderful considering he's not as smart as you told me he was." I pointed to an earlier assessment we'd had done, one which was designed to test children with high-functioning autism and which had scored difficult child 3 as having an IQ ranging from 135 to 142. I pointed to the confidence limits (any test with confidence limits is one which acknowledges it's own chance of inaccuracy). The school counsellor looked blank. Since we were leaving mainstream at this point, I just shrugged and walked away. Some battles are not worth fighting. This applies not just to our kids, but to officials as well! Between us all on this site, we are doing a good job re-educating the world! Marg [/QUOTE]
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