How to distinguish HFA and aspergers?

Post Reply New Topic

I would like to ask someone who is well trained in autistic development that question...

Hi. I was diagnosed with autism a few weeks back under the ICD10 - think this is used more in Europe than US). I met all the criteria for Aspergers except I had delayed speech development (didn't speak until 4 or 5) so the diagnosis was autism.

This group would be classified as HFA instead of AS, according to criteria used by most researchers.

Being stuck at single word level in speech development is considered more atypical than fairly typical speech development in AS subgroup.

Mottron & Dawson have classified as HFA adults who met AS timeline criteria for speech development but had very stereotypical or idiosyncratic speech in childhood.

I learnt yesterday that in the UK they no longer diagnose aspergers but put both Aspergers & HFA in the same category. They now just call it High Functioning Autism (HFA).

It seems weird because I understood that there is a difference between the two.
With Aspergers there was no delayed speech during childhood, but with ASD there was.

Well now, in the UK they are both classed as HFA in the DSM category.

Yeah.

Who knows?

It may turn out that aspies and HFA's are like African rock hyraxes, and american woodchucks. They look and act much the same but woodchucks are rodents, and Hyraxes just look like rodents but evolved from a whole different lineage related to elephants. Or like VW bugs, and Citreons. Same outward shape, but very different under the hood and chassis.

This seems to be an outcome a lot of people want, but I do not think it is likely.

Like that study that found neurological differences, people don't say that the AS group overlapped entirely with the autistic group, but was clustered at one end of the curve. Which is to say, not really different from the autistic group, except in terms of less diversity.

As you say, I think it depends on which system is used. If you are diagnosed in the UK under ICD-10 ,then (Childhood) Autism (I think the term high functioning has never been a formal sub-category, but rather an informal term for a subsection of this group with, e.g. IQ above some threshold) is still a separate category to Asperger Syndrome, the essential difference being whether or not there is normal language development.

The current diagnostic of lumping AS and HFA together as one and the same will probably not stand for long, as clinical research is indicating that there are in fact neurological distinctions. Many Mental Health Professionals are refusing to adopt the new DSM-V because they feel it's replete with errors. There's talk that it may be revised again, sooner, rather than later.

Specifically, the only difference between Asperger Syndrome and High Functioning Autism is that In Asperger Syndrome, there is NO significant speech delay and in HFA there IS.

I was diagnosed as an adult with Asperger Syndrome, but if the Psychologist had spoken to my mother, he probably would have made it HFA. After I was DX'd, my mother mentioned that I had not started speaking until at or after 2.5 (most children are mimicking words by 18mos) and went directly from being completely nonverbal, to speaking in full sentences out of the blue. No "Mama, Dada" phase, just straight to "I want that cup."

Hi Willard,
I too missed the "Mama, Dada" phase, however there was no delay in my speaking ability.
My first word was "Birdie", when according to my Mother I pointed at a blackbird in the garden & said the word "Birdie".

I went straight to sentences as well, but I started speaking sentences before I was a year old.

My mother tells me I didn't have any stereotyped or echolalic speech, but then she describes things I said and much of it was either stereotyped or echolalic. Apparently, I loved repeating entire scenes from movies or reciting lines from books.

The key words are "High-functioning autism". Asperger's is same as autism but with an average to above average IQ level. You could probably brake any mental disorder down that way, but it still wouldn't change the disorder.

"High-functioning autism (HFA) is at one end of the ASD spectrum. Signs and symptoms are less severe than with other forms of autism. In fact, a person with high-functioning autism usually has average or above-average intelligence. The differences from other forms of autism have led many psychiatrists to consider high-functioning autism as similar to or the same as Asperger's syndrome. However, usually children with HFA have language delays early on like other children with autism. Children with Asperger’s, though, don’t show classic language delays until they have enough spoken language so that their language difficulties can be noted."

High-Functioning Autism and Asperger's Syndrome

I did single words at nerly 4. but it was hard to get me to speak.

I had a question regarding “speech delay”. My mom wrote in my baby book the following:
- Age 2 - “He says very little. Longest sentence is 4 words. If you can understand him”
- Age 4- “His speech is still difficult to understand, but improving”

So, does speech count as speech, if people (other than your mother) have problems understanding you? Or is being difficult to understand (at that age) common? Just curious.

I think speech is still speech even if people can't make out the words you're saying (or can make out the words but don't know what you mean).

In the context of the DSM-IV criteria for Autistic Disorder vs. Asperger's, I have come to think that language matters more than speech -- that how/whether you use words matters more than your ability to utter them.

They told me that my first word was "AHOY!"

Which delighted my dad, who was in the Navy at the time.

Later in childhood my aspie interest was ships.

But as far as I know I probably also went through the normal 'mama dada" phase after learning 'ahoy!'.