Why do most people here think that AS and autism
They did a study to see if the two disorders as they're defined in the DSM are two distinct conditions, and they found that they neatly fall into two groups (like how Anxiety Disorders fall into their separate piles).
The problem arises when people use criteria outside of the DSM for Asperger's.
Worth noting that PDD-NOS failed that test.
But actually... a lot of serious researchers think there's something very wrong with the DSM definition, as almost all people with AS have conversational impairments.
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I used to think exactly the same thing that it was strange to put Autism and Aspergers together...
Then I got one son diagnosed with Aspergers, and the other with High Functioning Autism.
The difference?
The HFA child was diagnosed at a younger age (two years younger) and the "speech delay" was more obvious then.
Now, he's caught up and both children are fairly similar in terms of speech.
Now, I can see how there would be a a difference i n Low Functioning Autism, but not HFA.
Yeah, a lot of people think that HFA and AS are pretty much the same thing. I think thats kinda true, except I've noticed the people I know with HFA compared to the people I know with AS are more "obvious". meaning just starting out talking to them you could tell they have something going on.
One of the guys I know, who was diagnosed with AS helped out with some kind of research study. I don't know much about it, but the people with AS chose a different answe then those with HFA and he chose the HFA answer. or something like that.
But i'd say that Low functioning autism and AS are completely different.
The HFA boy is much more repetitive when it comes to speech. He will repeat the same phrase over and over again - even when he gets a response. We don't see repetitive behaviours from him... destructive behaviours though (compared to our aspie).
Interestingly, our HFA child doesn't seem to have a "special interest" that we can detect, while our Aspie child has several.
Thanks for that clarification. I'm not an expert on the subject.
My 2nd cousin has a fairly autistic child - he's still in nappies at 6 years and hardly talks. He got a diagnosis of HFA which is difficult to understand since there's no comparison with my HFA son's capabilities.
What is sad is that the government sees only a piece of paper with HFA written on it. My cousin's son obviously needs more funding than mine but the government won't see the difference.
Thanks for that, and you actually described some key differences between Autism and Asperger's; they probably don't appear too different really, as the outward manifestations of Autism and Asperger's aren't too obtuse (barring tantrums and frequent motor mannerisms). You'll probably see the differences in social approaches as they enter schooling; the child with Autism may play alone more so than the one with Asperger's.
Generally, children with Asperger's have the single and oftentimes cerebral "interest"; whereas if it's present in Autism (it's not always), it'll usually manifest later on in life as the child develops.
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I know a few people with Rett's who would blend well into users here. It comes in mild forms that without a genetic test would be thought to be regressive autism (I know women who have found out due to having a child with the severe form, so I don't doubt there are many women with it who don't even know it). And even some people with the severe form can type using eye-tracking and the like.
what's interesting about rhett's (correct me if i'm wrong)... is that all males born with it die very soon due to its severity... possibly prenatally. i forget.
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I second what KingdomOfRats said: Most of the "spectrum" is on this forum from what I've seen, which is cool; from LFA up to parents/family members and people who have some traits.
Males with Rett's die as they don't have the extra [normal] X chromosome which supplies [normal] proteins; females have this extra X chromosome.
Rett's and CDD are usually considered medical disorders rather than ASDs, however (they are PDDs).
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Very interesting thread. I mean I always have figured that the biggest difference between AS and HFA was speech history. If there was no speech delay then its AS, if there was a delay but you have an average to above average IQ, then its HFA. In fact Temple Grandin said in one of her lectures that AS and HFA is interchangeable. In the end, I wonder how much of it matters. If you are under the spectrum, you are under the spectrum. If I didn't have the speech delay I would most definitely have the AS dx.
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It doesn't matter if one can get the help they need. And in many places (Oz, UK, parts of Europe, the US to some extent], Asperger's and Autism bring the same chances of help as either one can be just as disabling as the other [depending on too many factors to list]; which is how it "should" be, as each individual is assessed by how they function, rather than what label they have.
The only thing that bothers me is when people say, this is what Autism is, not this or that, when Autism itself is clearly defined and standardized in the DSM-IV-TR and the ICD-10; when it changes, it changes, but as it's written, that's how it's defined for now. Of course, I'm equating "Autism" to Early-infantile Autism, which is where the DSM-IV-TR and its version come from. Asperger's as of the DSM isn't the same as Asperger's original description, but only a subset of such; it's Tantam's Criteria for children with social deficits like in Autism, but they talk well and are "little professors" in that they tend obsess over a single cerebral topic as their repetitive behaviour.
It's also worth mentioning that Asperger thought his disorder was different to Kanner's (Infantile Autism).
You'd be surprised.
I know a few people who were diagnosed with AS but who by adulthood at some point, are generally considered (and referred to by others as) "LFA" by other people. And the opposite.
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Males with Rett's die as they don't have the extra [normal] X chromosome which supplies [normal] proteins; females have this extra X chromosome.
Rett's and CDD are usually considered medical disorders rather than ASDs, however (they are PDDs).
yeah thanks, i thought it was sex linked. i just mentioned it cause while they are diff, people keep mentioning it's resemblance to ASDs generally.
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I am bolding the traits that fit me:
The DSM-IV-TR (this is how most people actually see them as different, and it's close to Kanner's and Asperger's original disorders); it's worth noting that it states in some cases it's hard to differentiate between the two, but this is only in some cases (people with Autism have far greater sensory problems too, which is in the DSM-IV-TR too):
It's not only that I was predominantly one way as a child and then another way as a teenager/adult (though certain things like sensory sensitivity were more pronounced when I was younger), but even day to day I can easily vary from matching one set of criteria to the other (just yesterday I was at a meeting and could hardly speak without typing it first, whereas today I was quite sociable and speech came relatively easily to me).
As for speech, I started with single words by age one (well within normal), but by age three was still just using non-communicative echolalia. By about age four though I was able to use conversational speech, though I often didn't understand what people were saying.
I was aware of several stims and hid them, converting more overt stims like hand flapping to things like leg wiggling. However, it wasn't until age 13 when several kids in history class were pointing and laughing at me, and someone said I was "always rocking" that I noticed I'd been rocking. Up to that point in my life, I had no idea how I appeared to others or that I even rocked.
However, I also had an all-encompassing interest from a young age (about 3 or 4) - insects. I soon developed many other intensive interests, heavy-duty interests in math and science. I later taught myself calculus from a textbook by age 10, then again at age 13 and again at age 16. I was known from the age of 5 or 6 as a "walking encyclopaedia" (though only about my interests).
In school I was almost always off on my own, though I would also seek out others to play games with me (but then insist that they play on my rules, and I invented the rules as I went along so nobody could understand how to play).
This was because I had a hard time keeping track of rules, and figured that this was because everyone else invented the rules of games as they played, because it seemed so chaotic to me - it baffled me to learn that this wasn't true, much as I would later learn that movies and TV shows aren't actually shot in real-time. Then, there were times that I did remember the rules, but changed them at the last minute just to cheat.

I do a fair amount of stimming, though for much of my childhood I could suppress it, at least while in a classroom. I've basically been able to fit a lot of the criteria/descriptions for both autism sub-categories, as well as a fair amount of the stereotypes, and for a lot of things am on the cusp of (such as slight speech abnormality/delay, and IQ of 85 that isn't above average but isn't so much below average to be considered abnormally so).
I also have had significant (compared to typical peers) difficulty with learning daily living skills and adapting on my own, but it is not terribly significant given the spectrum of autistic people's needs (not to say that my needs are insignificant, just that while I have much more difficulty doing things like laundry, showering, brushing hair, etc. than is considered normal, that I can mostly manage the basics like toileting and getting dressed and such, just that it may take me a lot longer than for NT people my age. (having a bulletin board with index cards saying what I need to do works beautifully, BTW).
So while there are plenty of autistic people (talking about the whole spectrum, to be clear) I'm sure who more or less fit with / identify with one or the other, there is a lot of overlap, so even though many people can technically be categorized one or the other, I think that the overlap even in people who are considered to be obviously one or the other, or people more difficult to categorize, suggests that the variation isn't a sharp delineation that could accurrately say "these people have condition X and these have condition Y", even for those who pretty easily fall into one or the other.
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Here is an old article from 1971 which first mentions Asperger's and its differences to Autism in English, which is relevant to this thread: Early Infantile Autism and Autistic Psychopathy
I think they are the same thing. The only difference is that those classified Aspergers have speech and some social ability. Just like other disorders or illnesses or whatever you want to call them, people are at different levels. For example I know a boy Cameron with cerebral palsy who can walk unaided. Natalie however also has cerebral palsy, but she is in a wheelchair. They both have a similar mental level. I've met others with cerebral palsy who have a normal mental ability, just have stiff legs. The point is they all have cerebral palsy. Everyone on the autistic spectrum has autism, but some can talk and others flap their hands while staring into space. My friend Dianne was diagnosed severely autistic as a child, couldn't speak and just screamed and did typically autistic things. She can now speak and communicate and socialise, so I guess that makes her Aspergers now...but she was autistic once. Well, I would say she's still autistic, she just gained some skills. But it's all autism.
Here's Wing's take when she "first" brought out Asperger's:
Van Krevelen (1971) and Wolff & Barlow (1979) agreed with Asperger that his syndrome should be differentiated from autism. They differ in their accounts of the distinguishing features and the impression gained from their papers is that, although there are some differences, the syndromes are more alike than unalike. The variations could be explained on the basis of the severity of the impairments, though the authors quoted above would not agree with this hypothesis. Thus the autistic child, at least when young, is aloof and indifferent to others, whereas the child with Asperger syndrome is passive or makes inappropriate one-sided approaches. The former is mute or has delayed and abnormal speech, whereas the latter learns to speak with good grammar and vocabulary (though he may, when young, reverse pronouns), but the content of his speech is inappropriate for the social context and he has problems with understanding complex meanings. Non-verbal communication is severely impaired in both conditions. In autism, in the early years, there may be no use of gesture to communicate. In Asperger syndrome there tends to be inappropriate use of gesture to accompany speech. In both conditions, monotonous or peculiar vocal intonation is characteristic. The autistic child develops stereotyped, repetitive routines involving objects or people (for example, arranging toys and household objects in specific abstract patterns, or insisting that everyone in a room should cross the right leg over the left), whereas the person with Asperger syndrome becomes immersed in mathematical abstractions, or amassing facts on his special interests. Abnormal responses to sensory input - including indifference, distress and fascination - are characteristic of early childhood autism and form the basis of the theories of perceptual inconstancy put forward by Ornitz & Ritvo (1968) and of over-selectivity of attention suggested by Lovaas et al (1971). These features are associated with greater severity of handicap, and lower mental age. They are not described as typical of Asperger syndrome, and they are rarely seen in older autistic people with intelligence quotients in the normal range.
The one area in which this type of comparison does not seem to apply is in motor development. Typically, autistic children tend to be good at climbing and balancing when young. Those with Asperger syndrome, on the other hand, are notably il1-co-ordinated in posture, gait and gestures. Even this may not be a particularly useful point of differentiation, since children who have typical autism when young tend to become clumsy in movernent and much less attractive and graceful in appearance by the time of adolescence (see DeMyer, 1976, 1979 for a discussion of motor skills in autism and autistic-like conditions).
Bosch (1962) considered that Asperger syndrome and autism were variants of the same condition. This author pointed out that, although Asperger and Van Krevelen (1971) listed features in the early history which they thought distinguished the two conditions, in practice these did not cluster into two groups often enough to justify the differentiation. The child in Appendix No. 6 illustrates this problem (see also Everard 1980).
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