difference between Asperger's and high functioning autism

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I like posts that look into the differences between HFA and aspergers, so i thought i'd add to the post. I have MFA/HFA myself.

I agree


Someone who has a speech delay, but attempts to communicate via body language will get a diagnosis of aspergers. You must also realise that many psychiatrists will give people an aspergers diagnosis because they believe it sounds better and has less stigma than autism.


I agree with this one, if i have reason enough i can initiate social situations. However if others attempt to interact and i am not interested, i will completely shut them out.


Although i have many sensory issues, from reading the forum i've come to the understanding that people with aspergers usually have worse sensory issues than people with HFA. People with LFA on the other hand appear to have the worst sensory issues.


Personally i find it easier to learn by doing, by feeling. I only need more repetition because people insist on teaching me with pictures or words.


My thought processes and Receptive communication is far less concrete or literal than the average aspergian. Although my speech tends to be literal and concrete.


From reading this forum the past few months, i'd have to disagree with this. I think aspie intelligence varies drastically.


I disagree with this. Although i lack empathy and do not understand what people are feeling, i have a wide range of affect. I've also seen video's of children with classical autism and HFA, they all have a similar effect to me. Most people with aspergers seem to lack affect completely (unless they are faking expressions).


I think you have this the wrong way around.


I disagree, i think both have ranges of impairment, i just think the impairments are in different areas.

One of the main differences i have noticed, is that people with aspergers are usually hyper-empathic. They feel others emotionally very strongly and cannot cope. People with HFA are usually apathic, and have very poor understanding of emotions.

We aren't taking it as a value judgment, or at least I'm not. Aspies are often just really insistent on factual accuracy, which your post sorely lacked.


The APA is wrong in regarding Autism and Asperger's as separate. They established those criteria when the autistic spectrum was less well understood than it is today. Researchers seem to agree that there is no significant difference between AS and HFA, and the APA will almost certainly change their classification system dramatically in the next edition of the DSM.


We would if you did so inaccurately.


Not distinct. Autism is not even distinct from normalcy, when you get down to it.

Just a random comment, but the real rainman (kim peek) has been diagnosed with FG syndrome, so i think he should have his own FG syndrome grouping

Yeah, I know.

But the fictional character was based on several people with HFA (I read this from the psychiatrist who helped make the character).

And for the ladies out there:

Snow Cake: HFA (or AS if you don't notice the small differences)

^ excuse my ignorance... but who is Snow Cake?

Snowcake is a canadian movie staring sigourney weaver as Linda, a women with autism. Basically a guy gives her daughter a lift in his car, and then there's a car wheck and the daugter dies. He feels abliged to say sorry to her and then feels abliged to stay and "look after" her when she doesn't seem to care that her daughter has died.

It's a very good movie and i think you should watch it

Some movie that has a lady with AS/HFA in it (Sigourney Weaver plays the part), who likes eating snow.

its way too hard to group out the differences between those two, i notice people with HFA have more self help skills problems, usually have no special interest, usually have a language delay of some sort, usually have more sensory issues then someone with AS, and usually people with HFA have more cognitive impairments or delays then someone with AS. Thats all not the case though because the spectrum is so wide and there are people diagnosed with AS whom may have no special interest, whom have had language delay, whom has severe sensory problems, so you cant always tell a difference. I say its all autism either way.

A psychologoist explained to me that there's no exact diagnosis, only a lot of traits (if you combine all A-NT conditions you get a kind of "map" that is known as the spectrum), depending on where most of your traits are located in a general area of the spectrum, you can get a diagnosis.

I think a lot of us (atleast I ^^) don't understand why you are posting this.

Lol have to admit that this made me chuckle

While we're on the subject of comparing HFA to AS, can someone tell me where the idea the autism is a left-brained issue while AS is a right-brained issue?

If you go to "PubMed" and search their articles for something like, "Asperger's Autism (HFA) hemisphere", you'll get the latest findings on such (a 2009 study).

HFA affects the left side, whereas AS is the right side, as per the study. Behavioural psychos/psychics probably don't like these findings, as it points to a distinct entity for each.

I just did it, here's a partial quote:

So you're thinking the verbal/performance gap might be diagnostic, to show dominance of left or right brain? This would allow for low-functioning Asperger's, with self-help skill delay; as well as high functioning autism with no speech delay due to general intelligence allowing speech development at a normal time.

It would be interesting; it would unlink "functioning level" from diagnosis altogether. Could be a good thing.

Isn't the right hemisphere the emotional side, whereas the left is the logical side?

It's often mentioned that although future research might find validity in distinguishing between AS and HFA, or other subgroups, any diagnostic distinctions would not necessarily be based on validity alone, since there might be too big an overlap in treatment response or outcome for it to be useful. Also, if there is some use in the distinction, this might only apply during certain stages of development.

That would be my likely diagnosis in such a case. But a verbal-performance gap doesn't occur in everyone and other aspects of neuropsych profile would need to be used, such as type of motor skill deficit. The authors in the above paper also don't know how their results would generalize to the less intellectually able group. In addition, I don't think studies have yet determined whether AS IQ profiles change across development.

In the above paper, they don't think history of language acquisition--which was just used to define subgroups in their study--can fully explain their results, and think the white matter systems involved are likely associated with many things such as executive functioning and motor skills. Future studies would need to include these to determine the many possible differentiating features of any subgroups.