Do you consider Asperger's a form of Autism?

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The more I study - the more I think they are the same. I dislike the High and Low terms as they imply Better or Worse, but they give a baseline of how easy or hard someone may find it to fit into an NT world due to anxiety or sensory issues. Some 'LFAs' are now hanging out in Second Life and you might never know from chatting to their avatars. There is even an island there for autistic kids to go and learn to chat to the world.

I use the term Aspergers to describe my quirks as people don't have any pre-conceptions when they hear the term. But I consider myself autistic, and want to work on advocacy & educating people as to what the term means.

I really wish we could have some of the curebies money to spend on an education campaign on what really works in helping a autistic child become a happy adult. After all many older pyche experts and medical professionals trained in the Dark Ages when it comes to understanding neuroscience and brain plasticity. That's why I like Attwoods work. He re-frames autism positively and writes about the thousands of people he has met on the spectrum living their lives happily.

AS and autism without mental retardation are said to be the same thing by many experts.

Well, if you look, HFA gives NO guidelines as to what a person with HFA can do, other than have an IQ over a certain value. With AS they have required a higher IQ in the past and most here today would say(and this should be clear with the no clinically significant coginitive difficulties), that the AS IQ requirement is certainly no lower than HFA.

It is interesting that I never saw any visual spatial problems mentioned anywhere. I googled it, and was surprised. I wonder how many are like the aane site that IMPLIES by proximity that a list of issues relates to NVLD, but says nothing about a definite relationship. It doesn't directly refer to it in terms of a diagnosis though.

Frankly, too many here, and professional documents, speak AGAINST such a thing being anywhere near definite.



Thankfully, your hippocampus doesn't have to be perfect for spatial mapping. It is probably 80% logic, and 20% short term memory. I have to admit I generally don't just look once.

It is ALSO the major problem I have with doing mental math, though I CAN do it and apparently do it better than most.

My short term memory used to be better, but not now. It IS amazing what a small change in diet can do though. and yeah, the hippocampus IS like a buffer everything has to go through.

Still, if my hippocampus was perhaps 3 times as good, I could theoretically look at a picture and spin it all over and show you all possible pictures without looking again.

BTW a LOT of people seem to have a hippocampus at LEAST as bad as mine, and the great majority are NT.



Yeah, I have gotten lost when I shouldn't also. That is one reason why I try to ALWAYS go the SAME way. Still, if I do it myself a couple times, I learn well enough. Tomorrow I get to try to teach someone that took that trip over 120 times, and STILL doesn't know it. GRANTED, under the same circumstance I fail there also, but I KNOW she isn't AS, and don't think she is autistic.

I tried to learn bridge also. I only took two classes. I remember MOST of it, but I got a bit confused about the turns, and am STILL a bit confused about the play by the declarer. Bridge is a kind of interesting game, and I can see why it has such a following.



brid=bird?

SAME HERE! BTW Birds apparently cheat! They think that the bird has magnetite in its brain that allows it to sense absolute magnetic north!

LeKiwi I'm in agreement with you on this one.

I feel all aspies have similar traits just at different levels - I'm all for one Full Official Criteria, instead of two, maybe it would be easier for the professional then to get it right.

Also I feel at times aspergers does not get taken as seriously as autism , and it should as can still have huge consequenties.

I go so far as to generally avoid the term "Asperger's syndrome." I call myself an Asperger's autistic. See, for instance (PDF file):

http://www.autisticadvocacy.org/modules ... p?itemid=4

I've always considered asperger's to be a form of autism myself.

No, I hadn't heard of it being associated with autism until I came here. So no, I don't consider it a form of autism.

Which didn't answer the question.

From my experience of observing individuals with AS in person, I am no different from them [concerning the disorder]; I had the delay in the acquisition of speech which supposedly makes me "different" according to the DSM-IV-TR. I don't see how I'm different now.

Daniel,

That is what my psychiatrist says. He makes no distinction between Asperger's and HFA in adults.

We are, The "A" Team!

Yes. I don't know if I'm HFA or AS. I hardly ever talk about my interests, but I wouldn't say I'm gifted non-verbally either.

Yep. Personality differences can describe away many of the innate differences amongst those on the spectrum, i.e., how the disorder will manifest. I have adequate speech now, but I don't utilize it; if I was an individual who wanted to initiate contact with others, my voice works. (I cannot agree that the desire or a lack of the same to interact with people is fundamentally autistic itself.)

Whilst I don't talk much, my language skills caught up really quickly; speaking of the core deficits of Asperger's, I have them just the same as anyone else with Asperger's.

Attwood on AS and HFA

Ha. My mother said I used to sit down and watch that TV show obsessively when I was three.

Absolutely not.

Me too and I still love re-runs. I particularly loved the A Team when they modded up a car or made some non lethal weapon out of turnips and a drainpipe. And I wanted to be Howling Mad Murdoch. He was class. I want some trashbags!

Yes, my father, whose physician believes he is an aspie, is as different from me as night and day. I have always been extremely verbal, whereas my father has fumbled over very simple words since he was a kid.

Thanks for the PDF link. I saved the file.