What is the most common type of autism?

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I've always wondered how thatr there's so many different types of autism, but I don't know what the most common one is. Does anyone know?

I'm not sure, but I think classic autism might be.

Don't quote me on that though.

I don't know factually, but I suspect it's the type that people construe to be "milder". Meaning someone can communicate well, but has trouble mainly with relationships. That's how it slipped through awareness until this point in human evolution.

I read on this forum that PDD-NOS was the most common type, but I don't know about the percentages.

I read in a psychology book about autism that it is classic autism (both high and low functioning). Aspergers seems larger, I think because of this forum, but it actually is rarer than Kanner's.

I wondered, myself, whether there was a more commonly occurring subtype of Autism....?

I always thought of it as a J curve, where there are very few people with severe autism, but as the severity decreases, the numbers increase exponentially.

I think that would depend on whether you mean the number of people who are diagnosed, or the number of people with a certain sub-type as a whole. If it's the first, I would guess classic autism, since those people are more likely to be seen as having a need or delay in some area at a young age. If you were to sample an entire population without regard to official diagnoses, I would say that PDD-NOS would have the highest occurence, since that set of people would require the least number of characteristics to fit a diagnosis. I hope that makes sense.

I like the J-curve visual.

It's PDD-NOS, the "miscellaneous" category, also known as "atypical autism". ~65% or so of the cases diagnosed are PDD-NOS. Next is classic autism, then Asperger's. Rett's and CDD together make up less than 2% of the spectrum.

Incidentally, PDD-NOS does require the least characteristics, but it can also mean too many characteristics, or a comorbid condition that obfuscates the diagnosis, or lack of access to history, or an odd developmental pathway, or any number of things. PDD-NOS probably includes both the mildest and the most severe cases, as well as the cases that simply don't fit into any one category. The extreme prevalence of the "NOS" category is one of the reasons the autism spectrum will probably be merged soon; if most of the cases can only be described as "miscellaneous", then it's likely that you're trying to subdivide the spectrum more finely than makes sense.

I have PDD-NOS, but I acted like an Aspie at one point, because I was smart. But I Mostly acted like a Neurotypical Person.

From my observations & experiences so far, I'd say the most common type of Autism is.. Undiagnosed.

I think there are an awful lot of people on the spectrum that have never realized it or had it pointed out to them, possibly far more than are self aware of it. I could be flat out wrong, but I don't think so. I think there's a massive number of Aspies out there who've managed to cope through well enough so as not to be noticed and diagnosed as ASD even though they are.

I was dx with HFA some years ago, but actually PDD-NOS would have fit a lot better, especially because I was very typical in childhood (speech delay etc.), I "lost" a lot of autistic characteristics growing up. And now instead of dx me PDD-NOS (what is not so typical in my country) I just "lost" the autism lable recently, because I just have some symptoms left, but growing up the HFA lable was correct, because back than I fullfillt enough symptoms back than.

So diagnoses can change over time and propably PDD-NOS is even more common than it gets dx.

Experts have always told me that most people with autism are low-functioning.

That was true in 1970, when autism criteria were very restrictive and autism was thought to be one in ten thousand. Nowadays--not so much. A lot of those new diagnoses are milder cases in kids who are mainstreamed in school and will be independent adults. Some others are in kids who have developmental delay and would have been diagnosed with intellectual disability only, but now have an autism/ID dual diagnosis--we are effectively "stealing" cases from the intellectual disability category. The upshot of it is that the average autistic in modern times is a good deal more independent than they used to be, even though there are more cases of "low-functioning autism" now than there used to be, too. The milder cases simply increased in number much faster than the ones that are comorbid with ID.

Seems to me that your experts are just falling prey to the availability bias. The people they see are the people who need the most help, because those are the people who see experts much more often. The majority, who need less help, are getting it from social workers and teachers and aides with a two-week training program, rather than going to experts.

PDD-NOS (say half)
autism and AS tied (the other half)

Aspergers is also a more restrictive diagnosis than Autistic Disorder. That brings in the question about how much these statistics actually mean, and how much is just based on the technicality of diagnosis. Anyway, severe autism is a lot more likely to picked up, and thus diagnosed, so it will be diagnosed more for how often it occurs.