10

The authors describe the case of a child who was examined when he was 9 years and 2 months old, after having received a diagnosis of Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS) when he was 4 years and 10 months old. The authors focus on the child’s solitary and imaginative activities, particularly his imaginary companion and his paracosms, within a general profile of his cognitive, linguistic, and social cognition abilities. The child’s profile was established partly by using standardized tests assessing intellectual, linguistic, and social cognition abilities, and partly by using a semi-structured interview focused on the child’s representations of his friend relationships. The results of the tests were analyzed in relation to the age norms for typical development, while the child’s representations of friend relationships were analyzed in qualitative terms. The child showed brilliant general cognitive capabilities, adult-like language abilities, and sophisticated intellectual concerns. However, some social cognition subtests and the semi-structured interview highlighted significant difficulties in reading mental states. His solitary behaviors were overdeveloped and his imaginative activities exhibited atypical characteristics. This case study analyzes the distinctive features of these activities in quantitative, qualitative, and functional terms, with an emphasis on the metacognitive and emotional dimension inherent to the child’s imaginative representations.