I dont have autism!

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Yeah,

AS requires a lack of significant disabilities in several areas. HFA has NO such guidelines. That means that an HFA person could be better than the best AS person in EVERY respect except one of those that will keep them from rightfully being listed as AS. So it is NOT as clear cut as Daniel indicates.

dougn,

That's where the overlap comes from; just as there's an overlap between HFA and LFA. There's symptoms that are more common to one than the other, and the more of these "common" symptoms you have, the more likely that you have one disorder over another.

Most with Autism and Asperger's fall into two neat groups. PDD-NOS is another matter; which has the same coding as Asperger's in the DSM-IV-TR, which is probably why the few other repetitive behaviours of Autism are listed under the Asperger's criteria, even though it says explicitly in the text that they rarely apply to AS.

Attwood modified the criteria for AS and put it on his website (he removed the repetitive behaviours that don't apply due to his clinical experience), which is exactly as it's written in the expanded text.

deleted

I guess I'm rare then. Heh.

I don't have any of the communication difficulties listed for autism, but I did hand flap a lot as a kid, which I guess is rare for AS. At least, it does seem so for people I've spoken to.

Are sensory problems actually rare for people with AS? (They are not a diagnostic criteria for anything as far as I know.)

The person I know who has a PDD-NOS diagnosis is indeed quite different from the people I know with AS. (I don't know her that well and am not quite sure why she has a PDD-NOS diagnosis and not an HFA one. She definitely doesn't have AS though.)

Sensory problems are fairly common. That is what got me looking.

From Wing (how AS is defined today):

Going by her, it's even rare in individuals with HFA.

"indifference, distress and fascination" are not the probblems I spoke of. I was speaking about just hyper/hypo sensitivity. Like with the PA system on the plane yesterday, it sounded loud, and had a lot of feedback. Nobody else seemed to mind. I guess you could say THEY were indifferent. It HURT my ears. And I have seen it listed as a possible symptom, and many here have said THEY have that problem. But I am not indifferent to, or fascinated with it. As for distress, I think they are talking about being startled/scared. With me, it is just painful.

In http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-244X/5/20

Accepted 12 April 2005



There HAVE been a LOT of related topics about that on this forum.

Perhaps Wing, and others look at it in regards to severity, i.e., a person with Autism will cover their ears due to a certain sound, and will also "shut down" from such, time after time, which makes someone's functioning drop dramatically.

Yeah, Hans had some hypersensitive and hypo- traits listed; not liking touch, preferring certain food textures, etcetera.

Plenty of Aspies shut down, too. I do. I'm friggin lucky I shut down during most overloads instead of having an all-out meltdown, because if I did, frankly, I would probably be in some kind of institution being doped up on Risperdal. There's nothing particularly threatening about some kid standing in the middle of the room looking vaguely puzzled, but people will marshal the white coats and straitjackets the second you so much as kick a hole in a wall.

I shutdown too when the sensory overload gets too much. I rarely have a meltdown---although it does happen from time to time. I react the most to noises. I also am very sensitive to light. As for touch---I don't like being touched unless I am expecting it and it is a family member. My last shutdown just so happened to be yesterday. And it didn't involve sound, light, or touch. What happened was this:

I was at my in-laws with my wife and sons. My father-in-law asked if I was ready for school to be out (I am a gifted intervention specialist). I said it didn't matter. He said that he had talked to a lot of teachers and they said how rowdy the kids were getting. I said that my 7 gifted students tended to work on their own projects so I felt fortunate. He said, "you'd better watch out, the school will give your job to someone else." I said, "well, I'm the only one qualified to do this (I just finished the requirements for teaching the gifted---this is my second year teaching this position). He said, "That doesn't matter, they will give your job to someone else, they do it all the time, the librarians over here are constantly losing their jobs to someone else---so they'll do it to you if they want to." I said, "I have just invested $6000 in getting my degree to teach the gifted so I don't want to discuss this." I got up and went to the dining room by myself until dinner was served. I remained quiet during dinner because I could not make myself come out of this shutdown mode. After dinner I went to the spare bedroom in their house and took a long nap. When I woke up I felt better. I watched the rest of the Master's golf tournament with the family.

I am still irritated over his conversation with me. He was so negative. I just didn't know how to respond. I felt like he wanted me to lose my job. I had enough difficulty in switching from English (for which I taught for 19 years) to the gifted position. So I didn't need this poked at me. Anyway...I hope I didn't stray from the topic here.

Mirror, personally it sounds more that you have Aspergers than classical Autism for, I can understand your hostility over being seen as being an autistic to some degree or another but, mind you though a great many people here on the spectrum are different and unique in his/her own way yet, don't let this deter you from enjoying your life and all.


ProfessorX

At times, I WILL cover my ears! I do NOT shut down though. I had a long talk with the idiots here about how fire alarms are NOT to annoy or make noise, but to get you to go out to safety. I can't put my pants on, or even plug my ears when my hands are being used to protect my ears. MOST alarms pulse, or something, to allow you to take care of such things.

Anyway, I certainly don't shut downn from that.

I doubt the division between AS and Kanner ASD actually represents anything more meaningful than a human "species-typical" preoccupation with verbal communication.

pandd,

Perhaps. Most with Kanner's have [concrete] functional speech as an adult, however; it's only around 18% who are nonverbal after 6 or so. Most of these with functional speech are LFA (moderate to mild MR), with the rest having HFA.

People have their own definitions of what AS is, and Tantam/Wing promoted theirs with something like this:

Those two parts being the defining features, which affect the functioning of the individual in various ways, and without the cognitive delays seen in other forms of autism.

If there's no marked differences between this view above and autism in relation to the number of similar symptoms and severity of the same (whether HFA or LFA), there was really no point in including it. Most people who describe themselves as AS with the same symptoms as HFA barring the early problems with cognitive development would have been able to receive a diagnosis in the DSM-III, under atypical PDD (PDD-NOS in other words).

I understand the main reason for including the diagnosis was because it was believed there were people who (whether or not the contemporary criteria technically included them) were not getting a diagnosis of autism or pervasive developmental disorder. Within the profession there was a stereotype about autism that most people with Asperger type autism do not fit, in addition there was a social stigma attached to the condition so that there were concerns some physicians avoided diagnosing it if they could.

So part of the purpose was to determine if there was a significant number of persons who having the core features of the autistic spectrum, were not being diagnosed or were being misdiagnosed. It does appear as though those suspicions were correct. The inclusion, did not arise because anyone had proven that there was some significant and consistent difference (for instance different causes) that could be distinguished based on the criteria provided.

Just to add, here's Wing's conclusion: