A 10-year-old client demonstrates strong verbal language ski…

A 10-year-old client demonstrates strong verbal language skills but speaks in a monotone, overly formal manner and interprets figurative language literally. The client also has difficulty with peer interactions, uses limited facial expressions, and presents with clumsy, uncoordinated motor movements. Which of the following diagnoses is MOST consistent with this presentation?

This strategy can work in either direction. In one direction…

This strategy can work in either direction. In one direction, someone accused of a major crime may try to diminish guilt by comparing his/her crime to some trivial offense, the argument then becoming If I’m guilty, then everyone else is too. An example of that might be ex-President Richard Nixon, who insisted the Watergate break-ins ordered by him, and resulting in his resignation, did not differ from the behavior of earlier Presidents. In the other direction, a writer who is trying to gather support against a “pet peeve”may try to elevate it into a major issue by comparing it to something vaguely similar which most people do regard as a serious offense-like arguing for a return to prohibition of drinking by equating someone who stops for a beer on the way home from work to a drunkard who can’t even hold a job because of alcoholism.