Does anyone have a child with a really specific diagnosis to do with cognitive problems.

[Onewayoranother2]

My son is in a mainstream primary school and currently being assessed for SEN, and we expected him to end up with an autism diagnosis. However a speech therapist has said that she's going to recommend he be assessed for some sort of condition in addition to autism, specifically to do with his cognitive abilities and retaining information and things like that. I thought it would all just come under autism so it's a bit of a curveball.
Appreciate any thoughts as I've just been left hanging with this until the next appointment.

There are lots of reasons someone can have difficultly with things like retaining information, etc. For some, this will ‘just’ be their ASD, but for many with ASD have other co-morbidities too. It is brilliant the SALT has an open mind and suggesting further investigation.

Will part of the further assessment include an ed psych assessment?

Autism is not a condition that affects learning and an autism assessment tells you very little to nothing about learning difficulties and needs. ASD can make learning more difficult in so far as pupils can get distracted by too many stimuli in the classroom, but it has nothing to do with academic performance in itself. ASD can go together with extraordinarily high academic ability across the board (e.g. Einstein, Mozart) and with lower ability and specific educational needs, and the ASD assessment doesn't look at academic ability. The ASD assessment looks at things like hand gestures, facial expressions, eye contact, tone of voice and the way in which a person tells a story on the basis of some drawings (whether they go into detail of the relationships and intentions between the figures, and how much imagination and fantasy they use, or whether they are more descriptive and matter of fact). An educational psychologist assessment looks at things like reading, spelling, numeracy, memory, working memory, processing speed, IQ. An OT assessment looks at things like handwriting speed and presentation.

@flawlessflipper @NellyBarney thankyou both for replying, this was my thread under a different account. My child has been diagnosed with autism and ADHD now, specifically innatentive subtype. No further mention of anything else. I don't know if the speech therapist suspected a different cognitive issue or if she was referring to ADHD but it really worried me the language she used, as if my child had a problem with brain functioning or something. Can't remember exactly what was said now.

Anyway the diagnosis makes sense for us, especially the sub type of ADHD and it's in place a couple of years before secondary school so good news all round. Thanks again for replying.

Similar boat, could be something like dyslexia
or something else but what is that?