Difference between High Functioning Autism and Aspergers?

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btbnnyr
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13 Nov 2012, 4:32 pm

I am not worried about the changes in the autism classifications, because I consider AS to be a type of autism, and people with AS to be autistic. As for self-esteem issues, I would say that many classically autistic people don't have those issues. There was no such concept in my mind until I read about it on the Internetz and heard about it in my therapy groups. I had no idear what other people were talking about when they talked about their self-esteem issues, so I looked it up to find out what it was. It took me several months of research to figure out what it was.

What I am worried about is already happening, which is that the autistic people who are the most social, communicative, and verbal are the ones defining autism as what they themselves eggsperience without considering the eggsperiences of other autistic people. For eggsample, some of these people say that autistic children are not really disinterested in people, that autistic children just can't eggspress their interest in the typical ways. Or that autistic people feel the typical empathy with other people, but just can't eggpress the empathy that they feel. Or that autistic people need structure only to deal with overwhelming sensory issues. One of them even tried to interpret the results of the Sally-Anne Test in terms of autistic children being overwhelmed by sensory stimuli. I don't know what they are talking about. I failed the Sally-Anne Test, and my failure of it had nothing to do with sensory issues. I failed it, because I lack the typical social brain, and I don't think about other people are thinking about by default, so I answered the ackshul location of the marble instead of where Sally would look for it. I need structure, and I want structure, because I love structure, order, pattern. I don't empathize with verry merry berry many of the feelings of typical people. Many of their feelings don't eggsist in my mind. I don't know what they are, and I am incapable of knowing or caring, and I also don't and can't care about hurting these verry merry berry many feelings that are alien to me. As a child, I had no interest in people. The reason that I didn't eggspress interest was because there was no interest to eggspress, and the reason that I don't eggspress certain emotions is because there are no these emotions to eggspress. One of these people seems to be think that autism is the same as sensory processing disorder, and eberrything in autism is caused by overwhelming sensory stimuli, and there are no social or emotional differences between autistic people and typical people. It's just we autistic people can't eggspress our neurotypicalism due to our sensory issues.



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14 Nov 2012, 10:31 am

btbnnyr wrote:
I am not worried about the changes in the autism classifications, because I consider AS to be a type of autism, and people with AS to be autistic. As for self-esteem issues, I would say that many classically autistic people don't have those issues. There was no such concept in my mind until I read about it on the Internetz and heard about it in my therapy groups. I had no idear what other people were talking about when they talked about their self-esteem issues, so I looked it up to find out what it was. It took me several months of research to figure out what it was.


Maybe self-esteem isn’t the right word, but at least I feel down or ashamed about myself – like I am a loser for e.g. not having anybody. Maybe the feeling is rooted into me from outside. As a child I probably didn’t feel it because there wasn’t that sort of awareness and because that I don’t really know what I felt back then. Some autistic people don’t probably feel it, but some do and therefore it is great that there are as many “voices” as possible. I think that it is important that all the different perspectives and stories are valued and accepted here.

btbnnyr wrote:
What I am worried about is already happening, which is that the autistic people who are the most social, communicative, and verbal are the ones defining autism as what they themselves eggsperience without considering the eggsperiences of other autistic people. For eggsample, some of these people say that autistic children are not really disinterested in people, that autistic children just can't eggspress their interest in the typical ways. Or that autistic people feel the typical empathy with other people, but just can't eggpress the empathy that they feel. Or that autistic people need structure only to deal with overwhelming sensory issues. One of them even tried to interpret the results of the Sally-Anne Test in terms of autistic children being overwhelmed by sensory stimuli. I don't know what they are talking about. I failed the Sally-Anne Test, and my failure of it had nothing to do with sensory issues. I failed it, because I lack the typical social brain, and I don't think about other people are thinking about by default, so I answered the ackshul location of the marble instead of where Sally would look for it. I need structure, and I want structure, because I love structure, order, pattern. I don't empathize with verry merry berry many of the feelings of typical people. Many of their feelings don't eggsist in my mind. I don't know what they are, and I am incapable of knowing or caring, and I also don't and can't care about hurting these verry merry berry many feelings that are alien to me. As a child, I had no interest in people. The reason that I didn't eggspress interest was because there was no interest to eggspress, and the reason that I don't eggspress certain emotions is because there are no these emotions to eggspress. One of these people seems to be think that autism is the same as sensory processing disorder, and eberrything in autism is caused by overwhelming sensory stimuli, and there are no social or emotional differences between autistic people and typical people. It's just we autistic people can't eggspress our neurotypicalism due to our sensory issues.


I agree with this. Although I think that it is inevitable that people with highest functioning forms of autism, meaning mainly AS, will make the most of the personal stories and self-advocacy. LFA in its public picture is the domain of the parents, and this perspective also inevitably steers the picture into a certain direction – a typical picture of autism is a young child having a tantrum. I wish for once someone would make a fully observational documentary, where the person with severe autism is followed without a frame. There are no parents “talking the person” or specialists giving their own view. The documentary would just follow the subject’s life – without a “narrative” written by others.

Autism is a really hard thing to understand even yourself and even harder to describe. I don’t know what empathy really is, so how could I know if I have it? I don’t think many typical people know either. There is a certain disinterest aspect in autism, as you describe it. It manifests in my life in many ways, but at the same time I have a hard time understanding it or putting a name to it. It is easier to talk about toe walking or something, but if someone would ask, what autism is, I couldn’t really tell. I sense that this aspect is in the core of it, but even still the whole thing is a mystery.



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14 Nov 2012, 4:14 pm

My own counselor told me that there is basically no difference between them, and I could easily be called either one, myself.
I DO fit the criteria for AS, and there is NO criteria listed for HFA, so i would think they are basically "one and the same"....


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14 Nov 2012, 8:24 pm

b9 wrote:
there are 2 factors that intermingle to produce a result which is seen as "severity of functionality deficits" (disregarding personality phenotypes) .
they are..
1. the true autistic severity, and
2. the intelligence level.

a person who is severely afflicted with autism and who also has a very powerful mind (high intelligence) will seem similar in functionality to a person with almost unnoticeable autism and a very average intelligence.

there are people who have only a tincture of autism who have average minds and are less successful than people who have more severe autism (divorcement from the heartbeat of humanity) and who also have higher intelligence.


I am a genius. I don't mean that to brag, but I scored 3+ standard deviations above the norm on an IQ test administered to me when I was six years old. and my functionality is pretty severely impaired. As in I am unable to support myself, attend school long enough to get a degree, or live on my own without assistance.

It is entirely possible that I misunderstood your point, however.



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14 Nov 2012, 8:29 pm

btbnnyr wrote:
What I am worried about is already happening, which is that the autistic people who are the most social, communicative, and verbal are the ones defining autism as what they themselves eggsperience without considering the eggsperiences of other autistic people.


I have experienced this and I think it's fair to say I am milder than you. Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg has a tendency in her posts about empathy to make some rather sweeping claims about autistic people and empathy that simply do not match how I experience these things.

Also, I've seen several people post on this forum that having an AS diagnosis means having certain skills and cognitive abilities that I do not always have.

I know I was not as severe in childhood as you, and I do not relate to everything you say about yourself, but I do want to agree that this is a frustrating tendency. I dislike seeing people speak over/for others like that.



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14 Nov 2012, 8:40 pm

Verdandi wrote:
I know I was not as severe in childhood as you, and I do not relate to everything you say about yourself, but I do want to agree that this is a frustrating tendency. I dislike seeing people speak over/for others like that.


I actually think that having a more general diagnosis will make it easier on people in general to see that when people are falling into that really frustrating tendency to assume that all autistic people are like themselves, that its not true, because clearly not all autistic people are verbal, not all autistic people are nonverbal. People being different enough makes it easier to break stereotypes in some ways. Being that general, its easier than when we're looking at smaller subcategories.

I'm not sure if I'm just being optimistic and using this to justify me preferring the DSM-5 criteria though.

But yeah, that's a really frustrating tendency.



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14 Nov 2012, 8:47 pm

It's a frustrating tendency that the DSM-5 won't create, as it is already there.

I look forward to the DSM-5 criteria.



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14 Nov 2012, 8:51 pm

Question:

As someone who falls more to the NVLD side than the autism side of the diagnosis, I'm often reluctant to identify myself as either AS or "autistic" for fear of giving others an inaccurate picture of the ASD spectrum (I am living on my own, after all).

What are some ways I can avoid unintentionally misrepresenting ASDs?


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14 Nov 2012, 8:54 pm

Well I was meaning I think that the tendency will be frustrating and there, but the DSM-5 criteria will have it such that people who know enough to know about autism will end up listening to the people saying to those things just a little less than they are now.

As it is now, someone with Asperger's saying that its viewed as all Asperger's, not all autism, someone with classic autism who is verbal its viewed as all verbal people with classic autism. Someone nonverbal with classic autism, its viewed as all nonverbal people with classic autism, if we break those groups into "all autistic people", then its harder to say that everyone has the traits that people are claiming. And then people realize that not everyone is the same even more, even when people make those statements.

So, the frustrating tendency is there, and it'll just be as frustrating, but having all autistic people grouped together in some ways might help fight stereotypes that would form in people's minds from people making those statements.

(I'm judging this based off of my experiences in vocational rehab, and just guessing)



btbnnyr
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14 Nov 2012, 8:55 pm

XFilesGeek wrote:
Question:

As someone who falls more to the NVLD side than the autism side of the diagnosis, I'm often reluctant to identify myself as either AS or "autistic" for fear of giving others an inaccurate picture of the ASD spectrum (I am living on my own, after all).

What are some ways I can avoid unintentionally misrepresenting ASDs?


At my office (autism non-profit), I am afraid of misrepresenting children with AS and HFA, because I did not have the same eggsperiences in childhood. So I am always looking on WP for what people in the NVLD subgroup are saying about themselves, so I can try to relay the information as accurately as possible. Also autistic people who were moar moar moar communicative or social as children, I don't want to misrepresent the higher-functioning kids by saying that just because I had no social desire when I was their age, that they don't either. I always correct people when they say that all autistic people are visual thinkers.



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14 Nov 2012, 9:04 pm

According to the international health authorities, Asperger's syndrome no longer exists as a diagnosable condition.

Therefore the differences (if any) are essentially irrelevant. If you haven't already been diagnosed with Asperger's, you never will be.



btbnnyr
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14 Nov 2012, 9:19 pm

Verdandi wrote:
btbnnyr wrote:
What I am worried about is already happening, which is that the autistic people who are the most social, communicative, and verbal are the ones defining autism as what they themselves eggsperience without considering the eggsperiences of other autistic people.


I have experienced this and I think it's fair to say I am milder than you. Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg has a tendency in her posts about empathy to make some rather sweeping claims about autistic people and empathy that simply do not match how I experience these things.

Also, I've seen several people post on this forum that having an AS diagnosis means having certain skills and cognitive abilities that I do not always have.

I know I was not as severe in childhood as you, and I do not relate to everything you say about yourself, but I do want to agree that this is a frustrating tendency. I dislike seeing people speak over/for others like that.


Har, you were thinking of who I was thinking of. She makes sweeping claims about eberrything that don't match how the majority of autistic people eggsperience things, in my opinion.



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15 Nov 2012, 1:06 am

I think that we all share one thing in common.....we all have autisim but suffer from various forms that effect us all in different ways some people with AS have no interaction problems and others have major problems with interaction as well as lots of other conditions that go with autisim....the bottom line is really autisim is one condition on a spectrum..so in my opinion wither AS or high function autisim... it's one condition.....but like a chain with broken links.



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15 Nov 2012, 3:07 am

http://autism.about.com/od/whatisautism ... nd-hfa-dif They are basicly the same thing. If they are not I have both because I have been diagnosed with both. :roll:


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15 Nov 2012, 3:23 am

HFA is commonly used if a classical autistic child functions better as he gets older, he functions like an AS child.

AS is when the symptoms start showing in early childhood. Not as a toddler, but it can.



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15 Nov 2012, 5:06 am

My doctor told me AS has very strict criteria, only a small percentage of people with ASD fall into that diagnosis. HFA isn't a formal diagnosis (at least not yet). I think it covers part of Asperger's, PDD-NOS and maybe even part of classic autism if the person is well adapted.

According to some website promoting autism awareness, people who can talk (at least a little bit) and go to the bathroom by themselves qualify as high functioning. :) If that's true I think most people here are super duper high functioning.


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