Asperger's Syndrome In Gifted Children

Characteristics of Asperger’s Syndrome
Asperger’s syndrome (AS) is a kind of the twice exceptional. It is a pervasive developmental disorder and it is characterized by impaired social interaction, restricted and stereotyped behaviours or interest, average or above average language and cognitive development (Gallagher & Gallagher, 2002).

All children with AS will exhibit impairments in social interactions (Neihart, 2000; Webb, 2001; Gallagher & Gallagher, 2002; Lovecky, 2004). They have difficulties in interpersonal relationships, understanding others and making and keeping friends. They act differently in compare to their peers. Most of the children with AS value friendship but they do not have the abilities to build relationship with their

gifted children
Some characteristics in gifted children with AS are common in ordinary gifted children. For instance, both of them have precocious language development, high level of curiosity, enjoy memorizing factual information, hypersensitivity, etc. (Neihart, 2000). Nevertheless, the gifted children with AS are different from gifted children by response to routine, motor skills, speech patterns, humour, social awareness, insight, disturbance of attention and inappropriate affective expression (Neihart, 2000; Gallagher & Gallagher, 2002) as listed in Table 1.

One distinct characteristic between ordinary gifted children and gifted children with AS is their response to the changes of routines. Even though both of these children may show resistant towards changes in routine, the ordinary gifted children are not as inflexible and egocentric about routines as some AS children are (Neihart, 2000). Children with AS can easily overwhelmed by minor modifications in daily routines. When the changes in the environment do not follow their “rules”, they feel upset (Stokes). They can become anxious and worry about the unknown. For example, when a child with AS says “Thank you” to someone, he assumes instantly reply with “You’re welcome”. However, if the person does not respond to the child, he will repeat in saying “Thank you” and become more uneasy until the person says “You’re welcome”.

Most of the gifted children have overexcitabilities and thus they are usually distracted by the external stimuli. For example, they might refuse to wear certain kind of clothing materials, to eat food of particular texture or run at sound of noises. Nevertheless, the gifted children with AS will distract by both external and internal stimuli (Attwood, 1998). Internal stimuli refers to one’s perseverative thoughts or concerns (Attwood, 1998). As for example, a child looks up to the sky and sees a cloud, then he starts to obsess about if it is going to rain or storm and consequently distracted from lesson or