Do you have problems figuring out "high functioning"?

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I get frustrated sometimes because I can't figure out what people mean when they refer to "high functioning" autism/autistics in the context of talking about behavior or generalized perceptions of HFASDers or HFASDers' everyday abilities.

Do other people have an easier time with guessing people's definitions of "high functioning" or are we all just using the same words with no idea about whether others are attaching the same meaning to those words that we are?

Do people just have their own personal definition they use and not even think about whether or not it matches anybody else's?

Does anybody, like me, use the words with no clear meaning attached in the first place? (I don't mean I have absolutely no meaning, exactly....but it's really abstracted and more just understanding that "high functioning" fits into concepts about categories involving "more"/"less" "bigger/smaller" and various other visual-spatial models I have for understanding gradations of things, and fragments of knowledge about people's stated definitions that I can't unify/generalize nor use to help me figure out what any particular person means if they don't specify with descriptions of specific abilities/behaviors/difficulties. The words "high functioning" are hard to relate back to anything real and concrete and specific, which makes the words pretty vague and meaningless to me. The only thing I can say I clearly, properly understand about "high functioning" is the relationship between "high" "medium/moderate" and "low" in a completely de-contextualized sense, which for me is often really not much better than no understanding at all. )

Well coming from someone who has high functioning autism I see it as a milder version of autism.

I think the term "high functioning" can be taken as: "How well do you work the wiring you have?"

Examples of this include- How well do you use written / spoken language? How are your life-management skills, i.e., can you drive, are you employed, can you do your own shopping, can you manage your finances?

Some of us are capable of doing more things than others- the term "functioning" is about living in the real world in practical application.

I think the only reason I could be considered "high functioning" is that my parents were the type that are highly driven. I didn't get a pass on anything, and they demanded that I did everything that my NT sisters did even if it took me longer to learn how or if I could only do certain things very poorly. For example, I still had to learn how to ride a bike, (didn't succeed at that until age 8,) roller skate, play softball (really sucked at that,) and drive (took me longer to learn, but I'm a pretty good driver,) despite having motor deficits. My parents had no idea why I was so different from my sisters (I wasn't diagnosed with Asperger's until I was 35) but that difference didn't translate into excuses.

I'm hyperlexic, so my language development was anything but "normal." Even so, being verbal (even though I much prefer communicating via the written word) was a huge help. I had no problem at all with academics, but the social aspects of school were very difficult for me.

Probably the best way I could describe the phrase "high functioning" is a person on the spectrum who has learned to navigate his/her way fairly well in the world of normal- in spite of being anything but.

"High functioning" is applied, when the autistic person has an IQ higher than 70, and "low functioning is applied, when the autistic person has an IQ lower than 70.

But I do give some quotes from Bill Nason from Autism Disscussion Page, where he writes about being labeled "low functioning" or "high functioning" and severity of autistic symptoms:

Stupid browser guess it didn't take my first post.


I find your questioning actually super interesting, because I read the OP and I'm like 'huh, I think that nearly ALL my words I use are loosely defined'. HFA is not a term that I think is too loosely defined. I also do not think of autism as a clearly defined term, or joy, or sadness, or language or just about a million terms.

Yes I think you described HFA accurately.

My entire life is use of words that are loosely defined. Loosely defined terms like 'feminism' creates all sorts of angst among people in an already charged topic.

It can be useful to let the person you are talking with talk on and on to gain some context into what their words mean.

Some people do use their words very precisely, while others, if you listen long enough, will actually contradict what they said five minutes earlier! But, you generally don't want to point that out!

I think functioning labels are vague. I picture high functioning as someone who is in control of their condition and close to normal and can act normal and have a job. But not everyone shares that definition.

Someone can have more severe AS than me and still be able to do more abstract work because they did college and another one with more severe AS has survived a dysfunctional family and turned out fine while I probably wouldn't have and would not be where I am now and someone else with more severe AS than me have survived the real world on their own without support. So I might be low functioning compared to them but yet they might be more inflexible than me, more rigid, have very poor social skills, be more impaired in TOM, have more sensory issues, have above normal hearing but yet made it through school fine and got good grades without any support. That is what they call a spectrum.

Well my ex had AS and I would say he was definitely high functioning because he could do everything, work drive, get a job easily, talk to people and he didn't seem to have to relax after a day of work or being out socializing with his workers, pretty flexible, no meltdowns, and he could shop on his own but I would say he did not manage his money well but I think that came from not wanting to live like he is poor because of his self esteem issues and whenever he had money he would spend it and then would always get money from his grandparents. But he was not streetsmart. He also did poor in school but was good at math and that was about the only subject he was good at. He didn't have good as spelling as I did but he also had learning issues and he preferred big text. He was also emancipated at 16 and survived the world on his own while I wouldn't have at that age. His spoken language seemed normal. But he was more rigid than me and more literal and very black and white and I seemed more flexible in my thinking than him and I had more imagination than he did. I think I was more abstract than him because he would tell something was too abstract when it would be something I understood and I was the one told who was concrete as a teen so I don't know if he was full of it or if I really was abstract. My mom finally told me this year I am abstract now but that was because she worked with me as a child on that and I am sure my ex didn't have that support growing up because no one knew what he had then. I am still concrete to a degree. Abstract is just harder. But I often feel he didn't even try and used AS as an excuse to not get things because I always tried, I would ask a lot of questions for one so I can try and get it. I would listen and he wouldn't do those things, instead he would be closed minded. My mom would also find a way to make something concrete for me that was abstract. I get my ex probably didn't have that support growing up so maybe it really was hard for him and he didn't want to try because it was too much work. But yet he still managed to live a normal life with that issue. A job for one and he happened to run into people who liked his rigid thinking so they trained him to b a manager back when he was still in his teens and he had been in management ever since because it worked for him and he was in control. No listening to authority or no change in routine at work but he was a cold manager and everyone liked that which was why he was always hired. If s**t happened, oh boy too bad, if you are in a crisis and it made you late for work or made you have troubles finding childcare, too bad. Ironically he was a parent himself so you would think he would understand but he didn't raise his boy, he only had him 8 weeks a year and would take him to work with him. He was also not considerate of feelings and didn't care if you were hurt or not. For example, he thought it would be wrong if my parents said to me quietly in public "That was not socially appropriate" because they didn't yell at me and shame me about it and make me feel bad. Sadly he would meet my mom's stereotype definition of AS but yet there are none ASD people out there who don't care about feeling either and if they hurt you or not. They just go "too bad." I always think that is more of being an as*hole. An AS person would feel bad if they hurt someone and their feelings or be concerned if they might or not while an as*hole wouldn't care. An AS person may have social anxiety because of it because they don't want to make a social mistake and offend someone. An aspie wouldn't know they would hurt someone and then feel bad while an as*hole wouldn't care (despite knowing) and then not care they hurt someone. But sadly there are aspies like that and I have seen a few on here too because they admitted it.

I would also say I am high functioning too because I can shop, manage money despite that it stresses me out so my husband took over the finances, (I have money anxiety), I can drive, I can talk to people and have conversations, I can have a job but finding work is difficult. My mom also made me do things on my own but yet she dressed me before school up until I was 16 and she made our lunches for us until we started having hot lunch in school only which was 7th grade. I was shocked to hear online how kids make their own lunches for school before junior high and I always thought parents did it for their kids. But these two are the only things I can think of that she did others may see as coddling or whatever people want to call it. I didn't have excuses growing up and I was never treated disabled. If it weren't for my parents, I would have been truly disabled and lower functioning. But yet some on the spectrum seem fine as adults despite no help as kids growing up and I wouldn't have been where I am now but that is what they call a spectrum.

I take the wording literally, the ability to function in a "neurotypical" majority environment. That environment and thus the ability to function in it will vary by where you live, when you live, and who you are forced to interact with.

It's only vague to me near the borderline.
Elsewhere, it's clear.
Most people on wp would be clearly HF based on their IQ, and if not based on IQ, would be clearly HF to me.
Of all research participants I have met, all are HF according to official IQ definition (and also mine), and of all autistic people I have met, I only know some LF children and one adult who is not clearly HF due to severe communication and language problems.
I think official definition of HF is most useful, not my or others' personal definitions.

My IQ is over 70. Autism developmental disabilities, intensive support for independence for self.

Last edited by Lumi on 08 May 2015, 1:29 pm, edited 2 times in total.

It would be good if there were some easy reference source for the official definition.

My understanding is that High Functioning means IQ > 70 though in places I read that it's IQ > 80.

In any case, it doesn't really have to with general functioning, but cognitive functioning as indicated by IQ, if I understand correctly. This is the way it used by researchers, but this isn't generally revealed to the public. When doctors tell parents of diagnosed children, "your kid is high functioning," or tell autistic people, "you are high functioning," they don't explain what that means. Authoritative medical sites aimed at the general public are evasive about this.

I think the IQ definition is useful because cognitive functioning is really important to general functioning and childhood development.

That makes sense. Do you know of a place online where it is so defined? Somewhere to point to when people ask what it means?

It is defined is all research papers involving HFA participants.

I tried a few papers on google scholar and had no luck:

e.g.,

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 4-sec-0002

The closest I found was an old one:

(Asperger syndrome and high functioning autism, Christopher Gilliberg, British Journal of Psychiatry, 1998)

A lot of them are behind paywalls but when I can see the methods, they often detail HFA participants without explaining what they mean, except sometimes in terms of specific learning disability.

All research papers I read define what is HFA if there are HFA participants.