Tests for autism?

[deeeja]

Hi, thanks to everyone who has replied to my thread about the ados test. And anyone who read it. (Feeling a bit of a social nobody at the moment) [sorry for myself smiley]
I have heard from the psychologist that my ds will also have cognitive tests. Why is that?
Did anyone elses dc have this type of testing? What does it involve?
Got to run, dh doesn't know I post on here!
TIA

The common cognitive test in the UK is the CATs (Cognitive Attitude Test). It measures the three principal areas of reasoning - verbal, non-verbal and numerical - as well as an element of spatial ability.

It is good for highlighting particular strengths and weaknesses. It can be used to help develop strategies to help your child better access the curiculum.

It is not used by many schools for all their students, and can be used by others to test your childs reasoning skills.

My daughter was required to do this as part of the entry requirement to one of the schools we looked at when she moved to secondary, and some school do invest in it. It may have been used as part of her diagnosis, but don't recall it.

Ask the psychologist for an interview after the test so they can explain the results to you, and how you can use this information to help your child. The test itself is not a major thing, and the best way of preparing your child imo is not to get stressed about it.

What I do recall was a great deal of relief that they were finally seriously looking at why our daughter was facing so many difficulties, and consternation that the school had to try and contact us to get permission before allowing anything beyond observation and the short notice they were given of visits we chose to give them permission to go ahead with these things if they did not have enough time to inform us as long as they did inform us at the earliest possible time.

It can be a very difficult time with a lot happening and very little understanding of what it means or what is said. Proper understanding often comes later. Get yourself a diary or notebook and jot down your questions, things that are said you don't understand. When you get to the end of the appointment ask for another. Just explain that you have been given a lot of information and need time to process it but would like the opportunity to ask more questions when this has been done. We have always found them more then happy to do this and very understanding.

Also ask if your local autism clinic or practioners hold workshops for parents. I have learned a great deal through these.

We had the cognitive tests done at an autism clinic when DS was 3. I found these tests quite upsetting, just to warn you, as they claim they are for non-verbal children but in fact they relied a lot on my DS understanding words like "same". Also, he refused to co-operate, including headbanging and screaming to be let out of the room, which meant they should have declared the test invalid according to psychology protocols, but they didn't and it has now gone down on record that he has a very very low IQ, which I don't really believe (nb, as soon as I later taught him the concept of "same" and matching items, he became fantastic at it and would have clearly done much better in the test). Anyway, enough of my rambling, but just be prepared for it to maybe be traumatic, and refuse to accept for the results to be put on his records if he won't co-operate! Good luck

I'm not 100% certain but I think that with ASD the cognitive tests show a big difference in scores between different areas of the test. Usually people will have their own particular strengths and weaknesses which will show on the test but with ASD the difference is more pronounced. Ds2, for example, was below average for his age for the language area but years ahead for the more visual areas.

I think ds2 was a little older than your ds so the tests will probably be different. Ds2 was 4yrs old and had to do things like copying a pattern of blocks, finding the next pattern in a sequence, and answering questions about pictures.

My DS had the same sorts of tests as coppertop's DS2 - he was 3.4 at the time.