Autistic students who are gestalt language processors (GLP - aka non-verbal) will face significant difficulties demonstrating their abilities on the SAT exam.
Wonderful updating of SAT-test history I have followed and lived with effects of all my life. I am sort of the exception that proves the rule of what you wrote:
70 years ago I was very lucky having academic parents who read to and with me and I became a very fast gestalt reader before starting kindergarten.* Later in school I could look at a page from a SAT-type test as a whole and immediately sense the two or three mostly likely correct answers without reading them word by word. That increased the odds of doing well under time pressure even when I was guessing on many items. I hope to comment more after I read your article carefully, but for now I just want to say that I think performance on those kind of tests is very determined by social class. Many other things come in of course, but having parents who are teachers gives an advantage beyond what wealth level provides. The most dramatic to me demonstration of this is Shirley Brice Heath's work summarized in this article:
What No Bedtime Story Means: Narrative Skills at Home and School
Author(s): Shirley Brice Heath
Source: Language in Society, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Apr., 1982), pp. 49-76
Published by: Cambridge University Press
You are probably familiar with her work but I rarely see it referenced anywhere.
* needless to say 40 years were to go by before I had any idea I was ADD/autistic.
Wonderful updating of SAT-test history I have followed and lived with effects of all my life. I am sort of the exception that proves the rule of what you wrote:
70 years ago I was very lucky having academic parents who read to and with me and I became a very fast gestalt reader before starting kindergarten.* Later in school I could look at a page from a SAT-type test as a whole and immediately sense the two or three mostly likely correct answers without reading them word by word. That increased the odds of doing well under time pressure even when I was guessing on many items. I hope to comment more after I read your article carefully, but for now I just want to say that I think performance on those kind of tests is very determined by social class. Many other things come in of course, but having parents who are teachers gives an advantage beyond what wealth level provides. The most dramatic to me demonstration of this is Shirley Brice Heath's work summarized in this article:
What No Bedtime Story Means: Narrative Skills at Home and School
Author(s): Shirley Brice Heath
Source: Language in Society, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Apr., 1982), pp. 49-76
Published by: Cambridge University Press
You are probably familiar with her work but I rarely see it referenced anywhere.
* needless to say 40 years were to go by before I had any idea I was ADD/autistic.