Case study: Mohsin, a 6-year-old boy, has difficulty in feeding and dressing himself, but training from his pa

Question

Q. Case study: Mohsin, a 6-year-old boy, has difficulty in feeding and dressing himself, but training from his parents has helped him to be a little independent. He faces trouble making friends outside his family and has difficulty in dealing with people in social situations. His parents are always worried about him and are aware that he needs consistent level of supervision in daily tasks. Mohsin's brother understands his needs and what he says but it is difficult for his peers to understand him as he lags behind them in communication and language skills. Throughout Mohsin's journey, psychologists and health workers focused on engaging his family in meaningful future planning using a variety of strategies and resources. This included offering them ongoing and timely information and assisting the family to understand and connect to resources.

(a) Identify the disorder Mohsin is exhibiting. Distinguish it from autism spectrum disorder.

(OR)

(b) How are the symptoms that Mohsin is exhibiting different from a more severe form of that disorder?

CBSECBSE Class XII Board 2023Subjective· 2mImportance★★★★★

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Part (a)Concept understanding — Intellectual Variation

Intellectual Variation — First Encounter

You walk into a room full of people. Some are solving a puzzle in seconds, others take minutes. Some remember a phone number after hearing it once, others need to write it down. Some can hold three ideas in their head at once, others struggle with two.

That difference — in how people think, reason, remember, and solve problems — is what we call intellectual variation.

It is not about "smart" versus "not smart." It is about the fact that human minds differ in kind as well as in degree. Two people can both be brilliant, but one might be lightning-fast with arithmetic and slow with abstract patterns, while the other is the reverse. Variation is the rule, not the exception.

The Intuition

Think of physical traits. Height varies. Eye colour varies. So does the speed at which you can run a 100-metre dash. Intellectual traits are no different. Working memory capacity, processing speed, verbal fluency, spatial reasoning — all of these are distributed across a population. Most people cluster around an average, and fewer people are at the extremes.

But here is the key: these traits are not perfectly correlated. A person with a large working memory may have slow processing speed. A person with fast processing may have poor verbal fluency. The variation is multidimensional.

Note

Intellectual variation is not the same as "intelligence." Intelligence is a broad, abstract construct. Variation is about the observable differences in specific cognitive functions across individuals.

The Precise Statement

Intellectual variation refers to the natural, measurable differences among individuals in cognitive abilities — including but not limited to:

Working memory capacity — how much information you can hold and manipulate at once
Processing speed — how quickly you can take in, interpret, and respond to information
Verbal ability — vocabulary, comprehension, and verbal reasoning
Spatial ability — visualising and manipulating objects in space
Logical reasoning — drawing valid inferences from given premises
Executive function — planning, inhibition, and cognitive flexibility

These differences are:

Quantitative — they exist on a continuum (not "has it" vs "doesn't") …

Part (b)Concept understanding — Intelligence Quotient Classification

Intelligence Quotient Classification

The Intuition

Imagine you give a test to a thousand 10-year-olds. Some will answer more questions correctly, some fewer. The raw score — "35 out of 50" — tells you something, but not enough. Did that child do better than most? Worse? How much better?

That's the problem IQ classification solves. It takes a person's test score and tells you where they stand relative to everyone else their age. The key idea is the bell curve — most people cluster near the middle, and the further you go from the middle, the fewer people you find.

Note

IQ is always measured relative to your age group. A raw score that is "average" for a 10-year-old would be "gifted" for a 5-year-old and "below average" for a 15-year-old. That's why IQ tests are re-normed regularly.

The Precise Statement

IQ scores are designed to follow a normal distribution (the bell curve) with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15 (on most modern tests like the Wechsler scales).

The classification system divides this bell curve into ranges. Here is the standard classification table:

IQ Range	Classification	Approximate % of Population
130 and above	Very Superior / Gifted	2.2%
120–129	Superior	6.7%
110–119	High Average	16.1%
90–109	Average	50.0%
80–89	Low Average	16.1%
70–79	Borderline	6.7%
Below 70	Extremely Low / Intellectual Disability	2.2%

\text{IQ} = \frac{\text{Mental Age}}{\text{Chronological Age}} \times 100

What the Numbers Actually Mean

The average range (90–109) covers half the population. If you score 100, you performed exactly at the median — better than half your peers, worse than the other half.

Each 15-point step represents one standard deviation. A score of 115 means you performed better than about 84% of people your age. A score of 130 means better than about 98% — roughly 1 in 50 people. …

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Mohsin has intellectual disability, distinguished from ASD by being a general intellectual + adaptive-behaviour deficit rather than social-communication deficits combined with restricted, repetitive behaviours.
His is a mild form (some independence and communication with training); severe/profound forms show minimal speech, little self-help ability and a need for constant, complete supervision.

Part (a)

The disorder Mohsin is exhibiting is intellectual disability (also called intellectual developmental disorder). The case gives the classic markers: subaverage intellectual functioning together with clear deficits in adaptive behaviour — he has difficulty feeding and dressing himself, needs a consistent level of supervision in daily tasks, lags behind peers in communication and language, and finds it hard to make friends and manage social situations, with these difficulties present from early childhood.

How it differs from Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD):

Core deficit. Intellectual disability is fundamentally a general deficit in intellectual and adaptive functioning that cuts across reasoning, learning, self-care and social skills. ASD, by contrast, is defined by two specific features: (i) persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction, and (ii) restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviour, interests or activities (such as stereotyped movements, insistence on sameness/routines, and narrow, intense interests).
Social motivation. A child with intellectual disability typically still seeks social relationships but is limited by weak cognitive and adaptive skills; in ASD the social-communication difficulty is itself central, often with reduced social reciprocity and unusual use of language.
Range of intelligence. In intellectual disability, IQ is significantly below average by definition; in ASD, intellectual ability can vary widely — from significant impairment to average or even above-average intelligence. …

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Part (a)

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