Despite high interest in twice-exceptionality among parents and teachers, limited empirical research has examined academic performance or use of support services among twice-exceptional (2e) students, particularly autistic 2e students
1. As a group, how do autistic 2e students perform academically? Does their performance change as they grow older? Which services do they utilize, and do services help or hurt their academic performance? Researchers Meghan Cain, Juhi Kaboski, and Jeffrey Gilger sought to answer these questions in their paper, “Profiles and Academic Trajectories of Cognitively Gifted Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder,” which was published in the journal
Autism in 2019.
For their study, Drs. Cain, Kaboski, and Gilger used two existing datasets from the United States Department of Education focused on preschool and elementary-age students eligible for special education services. These data-collection projects spanned six years each and were designed to capture a snapshot of the children’s services, needs, and academic performance. For this study about autistic 2e students, the researchers selected only students who had an individualized education plan (IEP) based on a primary educational diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Students with ASD were then identified as 2e if they scored at or above the 90th percentile on any subtest of an academic achievement measure or if they qualified for their school’s gifted and talented program.
The authors examined students’ achievement over time on a nationally-normed test of academic achievement (the Woodcock Johnson-III Tests of Achievement) as well as students’ use of medication and support services, as reported by their parents. Support services included educational services such as tutoring, learning strategies, and study skills services; mental health services such as mental or behavioral interventions and social work services; developmental services such as speech therapy, occupational therapy, and physical therapy; and assistive services such as assistive technology and personal assistants.
Some of the major takeaways for parents and teachers are described below.
Basic skills are relative strengths
As a group, both 2e and non-gifted autistic students performed better on measures of basic academic skills (word reading and math calculation) than on measures of academic application (reading comprehension and math problem solving).
Autistic 2e students had uneven academic performance
Many of the 2e students in this study earned a high score (in the top 10 percent) on at least one academic measure, but as a group the autistic 2e students performed in the average range on all of these tests — with the exception of word decoding skills, which were in the high average range for the preschool group. This overall average performance suggests that autistic 2e students may excel in only one or two academic skills, and different autistic 2e students may excel in different academic skills.
Gifted programs may miss 2e students’ academic talent
Although the authors referred to “cognitively gifted” students in their title, their study primarily focused on autistic 2e students with
academic talent. Surprisingly, 91 out of 92 students who earned an academic score in the top 10 percent were not a member of their school’s gifted and talented program, and of the 24 students enrolled in their school’s gifted and talented program, only one earned an academic score in the top 10 percent. These results suggest that the identification procedures for the schools’ gifted and talented programs miss autistic 2e students with academic talents. The authors noted that autistic 2e students may not receive the educational support they need to make the most of their talents.
Gifted and non-gifted students with ASD come from different backgrounds and utilize different services
In both samples, students identified as 2e had parents who were more highly educated than those of non-gifted autistic students, and 2e students in the elementary sample came from households with higher incomes. Compared to non-gifted autistic students, 2e preschool students used educational services less often, and elementary-aged 2e students took more medication and used more mental health services but were less likely to use educational, developmental, and assistive services.
2e academic performance improved over time
In most academic areas, 2e students’ performance improved as they got older, relative to the population as a whole, whereas non-gifted autistic students had declining performance over time. These results suggest that 2e students may compensate better for their deficits or leverage their strengths better as they get older.
Strong early reading abilities often average out over time
Although 2e students improved their performance over time in most subjects, this was not true for their basic reading skills. Many young autistic 2e students were strong early readers who excelled at sounding out letters and reading single words accurately, but over time their reading performance became more average. In the preschool sample, for example, 27 percent of students with ASD scored in the top 10 percent on a test of word reading, but at the end of the six-year study, only nine percent of the same children scored in the top 10 percent. Young students with ASD may experience advanced early reading skills but often do not maintain these relative strengths as their peers’ reading abilities catch up.
Service benefits were unclear
Although the authors hoped to see which services supported students’ educational performance over time, they found that students who used medication, developmental services, and assistive services performed significantly worse on some of the academic tests. The authors hypothesized that students with more pronounced academic struggles may be more likely to receive such services — not that the services themselves are detrimental to performance. Future intervention studies are needed to examine whether 2e students start to perform better once they begin using certain services.
This study was limited by the use of existing data, and the authors encouraged other researchers to purposefully study 2e students’ academic performance over time to better examine the benefits or detriments of specific interventions. Future research should also examine when and how students benefit from different services by examining emotional well-being, motivation, connections with others, passion for learning, and other aspects of development in addition to academic performance. Do mental health services help students feel calmer? Does educational support or the use of assistive technology increase students’ academic self-efficacy, enjoyment of school, or motivation to learn?
I have often heard parents and students describe such benefits, but without systematic research it is difficult to know whether these services are truly the source of improved feelings and achievement. Future intervention research with 2e students ideally will examine a wide range of potential benefits for students, families, and teachers.
1 In this article, I primarily use identity-first language (e.g., “autistic” and “autistic student”) because many autistic people have expressed their preference for these terms over person-first language (e.g., “a student with autism”). The term “autistic person” expresses autism as an integral part of someone’s identity and is often associated with autistic pride. See
https://autisticadvocacy.org/about-asan/identity-first-language/,
https://www.identityfirstautistic.org, or
https://raisingchildren.net.au/autism/learning-about-autism/about-autism/autism-language-on-raisingchildren.net.au for more information about identity-first language and autism.
