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NowhereWoman
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02 Jul 2009, 11:10 pm

Danielismyname wrote:
A delay in the acquisition of speech doesn't necessarily rule out AS (as after all, many institutions use Gillberg's AS criteria, which allows for such; not to mention that Hans had people with delayed speech in his extended group).

But anyway, it's more likely that he had Schizoid PD rather than AS. This is going by memory; his reciprocal social interaction seemed fine to me. I'll check out some clips of him interacting later.


This would be really interesting to see, thank you!! !

I've never heard of Schizoid PD...I will have to look that up.

I was actually going by Asperger's original criteria (as far as I remember) which had two clear differences between "classic" ASD, one of which was no speech delay. I'll wait for that info...I am always interested in learning more. Thanks again.



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03 Jul 2009, 1:29 am

Schizoid PD is the last thing I'd label Einstein with. Schizoid doesn't present with speech delay and a huge passion for a specialist subject... in fact, the specialist subject goes exactly against schizoid PD because one of the criteria is "taking pleasure in few, if any, activities." We also know Einstein had sexual relationships, which is another thing you mightn't find in someone with SPD, or, if you do, not more than one marriage. Also, the general lack of caring about other people (one way or the other--not malevolence, just indifference) is absent, as evidenced by the large number of humanitarian and political projects he was involved in.


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03 Jul 2009, 7:55 am

Callista wrote:
Schizoid PD is the last thing I'd label Einstein with. Schizoid doesn't present with speech delay and a huge passion for a specialist subject... in fact, the specialist subject goes exactly against schizoid PD because one of the criteria is "taking pleasure in few, if any, activities."


A "huge passion for a specialist subject" is compatible with "taking pleasure in few, if any, activities." - for me, seems litle more than 2 different ways of saying the same thing.

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Also, the general lack of caring about other people (one way or the other--not malevolence, just indifference) is absent, as evidenced by the large number of humanitarian and political projects he was involved in.


I am not sure - you can perfectly be indiferent to other people at an emotional level (like ocuur in SPD), but care by them (or by "Humanity") at an intelectual level. I think that it was John Stuart Mill who said that his father (James Mill) had a great love for Humanity but no love for real men.

The combination of emotional coldness and preference by abstract reasoning in Schizoid PD can indeed produce these kind of "humanitarians who don't talk with their neighours".



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03 Jul 2009, 8:11 am

Btw, I think that these diagnosis of dead and famous people have a problem (well, many problems, but this is more one): there is a tendency to overstimate the degree of focus of their interests (and, then, over-diagnosis of ASDs).

Why? Because, looking for the life and career of a dead (and specially a famous) person, we naturally concentrate in the things that made the fame of that person, and ignore the things where these person never made nothing relevant.

Then , looking backwards, that person will appear more "specialized" than s/he really was.



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03 Jul 2009, 9:57 am

NowhereWoman,
great post,am also think the same if he really was on the spectrum.
Many call him aspie by default to use as a good role model for AS,but if he was on the spectrum he would have been under AD or PDDNOS.

some level of mental retardation is quite common with Autism but they also dont look at the extra communicative, language, imaginative,processing and learning difficulties common to autism which affects IQ score and do not give a true view of someones intelligences.
Auties are not taken as seriously with intelligence and talent as others on the spectrum,as many still have the view autism is mental retardation [at its worst],there isn't the same encouragement or chances to get as far,especially for those with profound autism but have a great skill in some area [such as art],its almost like ignorants make themselves selectively blind to it.


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03 Jul 2009, 11:25 am

TPE2, wow, GREAT points. I never thought of that. You're right. We tend to truncate what we "know" about anyone of celebrity. "He did this, this and this in his lifetime." Yes, and seventy million other very mundane things in the middle...Thanks for pointing this out. It makes so much sense.

KingdomOfRats, yes, and that's not even to mention that also according to his own recollection at one point (I'll have to look that up--it was a writing of his where he was describing himself as a child), at least two teachers DID deem him "mentally ret*d" (sorry for that; it used to be the clinical phrase, or one of them) as a child--then magically he became A-OK and beyond. Much like today...when, as youngsters, our kids are ASD but as soon as they show a glimmer, "Let's change the diagnosis--he has to have AS." (Oversimplification but you get the picture...)

But yep, I do agree that you really can't diagnose someone in retrospect, from afar, based on some concrete data and a whole lot of rumor...that's very true.

I see this what with my son...at first he was ASD with intellectual delay; then he began speaking a little and his (estimated--it's impossible to do this particular program properly yet) IQ magically jumped (I mean in comparison to the amount it would have been expected to due to the passing of time)...then a year later when, coincidentally, he was, well, a year older and wiser like any other child, AS, ASD, NT or anything at all, he is now "average" intelligence. Wonder what will happen in another year...Whatever does happen, it was nothing magical, I'm sure of that; it was simply the natural progression of any person. And it wouldn't really matter so much (and would actually just be a bit amusing) concerning the "professionals" changing their minds about my son, like they do so many other children and adults, with such authority...if it didn't mean condemnation and dire predictions on one end of the scale, and a glowing commendation on the other. That part really bugs me...and can, I feel, be harmful.



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03 Jul 2009, 11:36 am

Oh, and I should add that my research about Einstein didn't come about because of the AS issue at all. It started when I got tired of everyone and his or her mother telling me "Einstein didn't talk until he was X years old!" (insert_age_that's_one_year_older_than_my_child_then_was_here) and decided to look it up myself. You hear some pretty outrageous assertions about this issue. Some people say he was 3...4...even 5. Most have an urban legend about what he said (i.e. "the toast was never burned before"). But according to a letter from his father, he first spoke (this is at all--so, true speech delay) was at just over two and a half years old in response to his sister being brought home from the hospital. It's actually a cute story.

Anyway...true to form, once I found out a little, I started obsessing on finding out a lot, and, well, here I am now. :lol:



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04 Jul 2009, 1:31 pm

I heard a lot of people saying Einstein had AS. He surely had quite awkward social behaviour. He once made a list of the things he wanted his wife do for him, like cooking for him and wanted her to sign that list. His wife didn't sign it of course. Ok, is that strange or not? Seems to me like a person who don't know too much about the rules that govern social interaction.



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04 Jul 2009, 2:02 pm

Wedge wrote:
I heard a lot of people saying Einstein had AS. He surely had quite awkward social behaviour. He once made a list of the things he wanted his wife do for him, like cooking for him and wanted her to sign that list. His wife didn't sign it of course. Ok, is that strange or not? Seems to me like a person who don't know too much about the rules that govern social interaction.


Oh, certainly anecdotes could suggest that he had social issues. It's just that there's no reason at all to attribute it to AS specifically (rather than, for example, Kanner autism)...except that he was smart. And we all know an ASD person can't be smart...That's the part that gets to me.



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04 Jul 2009, 2:23 pm

You can really never know for sure what disorder someone has unless it's clearly evident in the brain, and even then, can't be entirely certain, cause things can be adapted for. That's especially true of someone like Einstein with a brain that probably nobody can comprehend anyways.
One thing that occurred to me is that just because someone doesn't talk, doesn't mean that they can't. If a child doesn't speak when expected, then one day starts speaking far above their age level, how do you classify the delay? It probably didn't happen overnight.
While I wasn't actually particularly delayed, when my mom first tried to teach me numbers and letters, she said I "didn't seem interested" so she stopped trying. Then, one day awhile later I just suddenly knew them. (I refused to watch TV as a child, so it didn't come from watching sesame street or anything) I was too young to remember, but probably I was interested, and did learn what she taught me, I just didn't seem interested. So by the same token, it seems totally possible to me that a child could be considered to have a speech delay if they don't talk when expected, but not actually have that speech delay, because they simply chose not to. Would certainly be a very aspie thing to do.

Not saying that that was the case, or trying to say I'm like Einstein.. just using that example of how a delay is, er, relative. (excuse the pun...)



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04 Jul 2009, 2:29 pm

Maggiedoll wrote:
One thing that occurred to me is that just because someone doesn't talk, doesn't mean that they can't. If a child doesn't speak when expected, then one day starts speaking far above their age level, how do you classify the delay? It probably didn't happen overnight.


Because as far as I understand things, that's really the whole point--ASD people often can speak, particularly physically (yes, they checked my son out for his mouth, tongue and throat physiology and the whole nine) and frequently ASD people score higher on receptive than expressive language...meaning that, those two things put together, barring intellectual delay it isn't a case of whether the child "can" speak but whether he or she...does. I don't know if that makes sense. In other words, an ASD person likely can understand and probably "could" speak earlier than he or she does, technically. The fact that he or she doesn't, regardless, points to the ASD issues that prevent the speech from coming; whether these are selective mutism (social or sensory) or inability due to the brain not being able to make those connections (in relation to ASD as a whole).

And of course sometimes there's elective mutism but again...that doesn't mean there's "no speech delay"--for practical purposes, there is. I mean how else is one to judge speech delay otherwise? (Not that I'm saying psychological criteria are infallible. They're far from that! Just saying...if speech delay and intellectual delay possibility are taken out of the AS equation--then you really no longer have AS, but autism anyway.)

So really that's the whole point. Whether or not he "felt like" speaking is still an ASD issue...because an NT person, generally, doesn't speak because he has to, because he's told to or any other reason than, well, he just finds it fun to talk.

I hope this makes sense...I tend to write in run-on sentences!



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04 Jul 2009, 3:11 pm

NowhereWoman wrote:
cyberscan wrote:
It wasn't until just before last year that I came out about being autistic. Until very recently (and in many cases still is) autistic disorder has been considered a form of mental retardation. I'm a computer programmer, electronics technician, and locksmith. I am also a Biblical scholar. I don't think I have done so badly for being a "ret*d."


Yes--my point exactly! It makes me CRAZY when people describe, or hint at, AS as "the smart form" of autism. This presupposes that AS means genius--untrue; and that ASD means intellectual delay--untrue.

The fact that AS criteria include no intellectual delay does not mean that AS people are all geniuses--and does not mean that all (or even most...or many) ASD people have intellectual delay. Gaaaaaaaah. But this idea is so incredibly pervasive that Einstein "had to be" AS...as if it were a compliment...and NOT ASD...heaven forbid.

This is a pet peeve of mine...on so many levels. I suspect mostly in defensiveness of my son.

Thanks for responding.

I was reading somewhere that 70% of people with Autism are classified as Mentally ret*d. I think it was on the WIRED article about AS. There's a guy I know with AS with a speech delay as well :/.
I think some of the stuff you say might be incorrect.
EMZ.



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04 Jul 2009, 3:25 pm

Emor wrote:
NowhereWoman wrote:
cyberscan wrote:
It wasn't until just before last year that I came out about being autistic. Until very recently (and in many cases still is) autistic disorder has been considered a form of mental retardation. I'm a computer programmer, electronics technician, and locksmith. I am also a Biblical scholar. I don't think I have done so badly for being a "ret*d."


Yes--my point exactly! It makes me CRAZY when people describe, or hint at, AS as "the smart form" of autism. This presupposes that AS means genius--untrue; and that ASD means intellectual delay--untrue.

The fact that AS criteria include no intellectual delay does not mean that AS people are all geniuses--and does not mean that all (or even most...or many) ASD people have intellectual delay. Gaaaaaaaah. But this idea is so incredibly pervasive that Einstein "had to be" AS...as if it were a compliment...and NOT ASD...heaven forbid.

This is a pet peeve of mine...on so many levels. I suspect mostly in defensiveness of my son.

Thanks for responding.

I was reading somewhere that 70% of people with Autism are classified as Mentally ret*d. I think it was on the WIRED article about AS. There's a guy I know with AS with a speech delay as well :/.
I think some of the stuff you say might be incorrect.
EMZ.


You're right about the intellectual delay classification, but it is typically based on standard IQ tests, which are not the best or most accurate tests to give a non-NT person. However, I hadn't heard 70%. I had heard 30%, which still is not most. I will look that up, though. :) ETA: Here's a link from Willamette U about IQ testing and the like for ASD people: http://www.willamette.edu/dept/comm/reprint/edelson/



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04 Jul 2009, 3:39 pm

When you're looking at developmental delay stats for the Spectrum, you have to ask whether the stats are for people with Kanner's or people on the entire spectrum. If you don't count CDD and Rett's (both are quite rare), Kanner's (Autistic Disorder or classic autism) is the category where they will put the people with the most obvious symptoms and the largest delays, by default. In many cases an evidently intelligent child with all the symptoms of Kanner's will get a PDD-NOS diagnosis just because he seems intelligent. If you take the whole spectrum, you will get a completely different number than you get if you just take people with the specific Autistic Disorder diagnosis.

When developmental delay makes it more likely that you'll get one diagnosis rather than another, of course you're going to get lower IQs in that group! And that's not even touching the problem of measuring IQs among autistic people or the possibility that these IQs have any real relevance in the first place, plus the usual gap in adaptive skills versus academic skills which you can see very plainly even among Asperger's people who ostensibly have no delay...


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