Autism spectrum has no clear cut-off point, research news

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^ You have a point there.
Most cases of intellectual disability can be explained genetically (ie. down syndrome) but there are few unexplained cases, studies show are usually due to chromosomal abnormalities.

Actually, most cases of intellectual disability CANNOT be explained by genetics.

Most of the cases have an environmental causation (such as lead poisoning).

Low functioners aren't ret*d, their sensory issues are much, much worse than typical aspies. To cope with those sensory issues they do things lay people may see as "ret*d" but it's not, it's merely their way of shutting down the sensory issues. And yes, I do take offense at that term.

Low functioning autistic people can be either intellectually disabled or not. Autism has such a wide range of causes, that it probably has a lot to do with the type of autism. We just have been unable to determine all or even most of the causes. There are some types that are caused by a single gene, but they are the minority.

This is good debate, I think I end up agreeing with each post as I read it!

(Never thought that about beserkers & PTSD ,,, interesting idea)

I kind of agree with some of the points raised which chimed a bit and reminded me of R.D. Laing` philosophies from the 60s.

`Laing's views on the causes and treatment of serious mental dysfunction, greatly influenced by existential philosophy, ran counter to the psychiatric orthodoxy of the day by taking the expressed feelings of the individual patient or client as valid descriptions of lived experience rather than simply as symptoms of some separate or underlying disorder. Laing was associated with the anti-psychiatry movement, although he rejected the label`.... quote from Wiki.

Actually, that's not all that clear.

Let's take one criteria from the RRB section of the DSM-V criteria for a moment.



Someone who spends extended periods of time humming and flapping and twiddling objects obviously meets this criteria. At the other end, someone who doesn't do any of the behaviours mentioned there wouldn't meet the criteria. But what about a toddler who rocks only when trying to fall asleep? What about two kids in a playground repeatedly acting out their favourite Harry Potter scene together? What about a teenager who memorizes the lyrics of her favourite songs and sings them over and over? Or a toddler who insists on being read the same bedtime story every night, and begs parents to reread the story multiple times in a row? Or a child who casually fiddles with his ear on a regular basis, but shows no other repetitive behaviour?

There is some repetitive behaviour that's normal. There is also some repetitive behaviour that is not normal. The line between the two isn't clear at all. Is a single stim enough? Does it have to be in multiple situations, or only one? Does it have be an unusual kind of stim, or can activities that everyone does occasionally count if it's clearly 'more repetitive' in some way? I could do this with each and every criteria.

Also, the DSM criteria states that a person should have all three of the social criteria and at least two RRB criteria. What if someone meets only two of the social criteria? Or only one RRB criteria? They could still have a lot more struggles than someone who meets no criteria, but they wouldn't qualify for the diagnosis. Well, you could maybe argue the criteria should be relaxed, but if so, how much? What if a person met only one social criteria? Or their sole criteria met in either section was a single RRB criteria? Even if you see each criteria as black-and-white, the fact that you can meet any number of criteria makes it subjective to decide where the cut-off should be.

I think of the difficulty as a little bit like a colour gradient, for example between purple and red.

At some point pretty much everyone would say purple and at the other end people would agree on red... But in the middle, it's not so clear where red stops and purple begins.

But it would be foolish to say that there was no such perception as purple or red.

Although I guess with all the dimensions of autism perhaps white, black and the shades in between would make more sense.

Do you really think that these other traits have clear cutoff points either?

These traits are even more varied and multi-dimensional than the social skills thing. So how can there possibly be a clear, non-arbitrary cutoff point?

Do you (or anyone else here) really think that ANY of the impairments in said triad have a clear cutoff point? If so, which one(s)? It seems to me that ALL of them, without any exceptions whatsoever, are multi-dimensional sets of traits, ALL of which vary dimensionally, not categorically. Moreover, any line of demarcation for any of them is inherently at least somewhat subjective.

Last edited by Mona Pereth on 19 Nov 2018, 5:59 am, edited 1 time in total.

But this, in turn, depends as much on your situation as it does on your underlying condition. Two people with identical traits can have very different outcomes in daily life depending on their physical surroundings, their education, the attitudes of the people around them, and what kinds of coping skills they've learned.

Partly explained by:
1) the misdiagnosis of FXS, wrongly diagnosed as autism and the FXS remains as a missed diagnosis.
2) there is a subgroup who have both conditions
3) the inclusion of groups 1 and 2 above in AS research samples skews the research findings and is invisible as a confounding variable

Poor scientific rigour greatly affects claims made in AS research generally.