Rain Man and the spectrum

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Hi all,
I'm sure most of us know of the movie Rain Man and if my memory serves, there is a line in the movie that states "Your brother is High-Functioning". Now this movie is from years ago and diagnostic criteria has come a long way so this got me thinking, Where on the modern spectrum is Rain Man? And the impact this has on current classifications.

Many today believe Aspergers and HFA are the same thing especially since Aspergers does not exist in the DSM 5. As such, Rain Man is an Aspie?!? That just doesn't seem right. (To me at least, if you are an Aspie like Rain Man I mean no offense and please excuse my ignorance).

Raymond Babbitt, the character, I believe is moderately/severely affected by autism--but he possesses savant skills.

I believe HFA and Asperger's are different; though both are on the autistic spectrum.

definitely not aspergers.

He would probably be ASD type three, or maybe type two. Somewhere between what they used to call "low functioning" and what they should have called "middle functioning"(except that there was no official category of "middle functioning" but thats what the modern category of "ASD type 2" amounts to.

Rainman is most definitely not high functioning by today's criteria, but neither AS nor HFA were diagnoses when the movie was made.

Since severe was what autism meant in the 80's, Rainman is probably moderate by today's criteria and as high functioning as it got in the 80's. But that's not how he comes off to me personally, I personally see him as severe.

Whether AS and HFA is the same has been discussed here for years.

I don't consider AS and HFA to be exactly the same. AS is about having no speech delay and no delay in self help skills. To me it's a significant difference between hitting the early mile stones (and not needing any more parental care than most kids, be able to be out alone, go grocery shopping and be home alone for a while as a bigger kid etc), and someone who can't.

It was also supposed to be a difference that AS usually comes with higher verbal IQ and HFA with higher performance IQ.

There used to be a member here who said that the problem with any category you could come up with to differentiate between HFA and AS, any given criteria would be true for about half of both groups.

Three other people I have been in touch with thought there were differences between HFA and AS, including:
- in an autism center aspies wanting to talk about their problems while HFA wanting to play games and have fun
- HFA having poorer speech even as teens (the person saying this based it on an HFA friend he had, he was aspie)
- HFA having less need to participate in chats, being happy to keep their thoughts to themselves, apparently unlike aspies
- aspies having more need to be social than HFA
- aspies being really obsessive about their obsessions while HFA are interested but not obsessive in the same way and less likely to collect things in connection to their interest (if for instance the person likes trains, a HFA would like trains, while an aspie would love trains, think trains, speak of trains, collect trains and train related things ranging from actual models to duvet covers and books (this from two sisters with HFA and AS diagnoses respectively)

Regardless, none of these things will be true only for the members of one of the groups nor for all the members of said group. There might be some differences between HFA and AS but there are likely more similarities than differences.

I don't think the line, "high functioning" means high functioning as in level 1 Asperger's type autism.

I think it means high functioning for someone with level 3 autism. Meaning he's verbal and responds to questions verbally fairly well. But you still couldn't hold a regular conversation with him. I believe the character is definitely supposed to be a classic level 3 autistic.

Now with me, I don't respond verbally as fluently as that at all. The most you'll usually get out of me is a single word or two. But of course I communicate fluently textually (although slowly). Whereas I don't think that character would communicate fluently textually either. But it's hard to say since he's just a character.

To me, the whole movie was unrealistic because there was too little time to recover after a forced, huge change each day, especially after a very stable life. The pace, at least, was very functional.

This is LFA.
Someone completely nonverbal is LFA.

Rainman would be mid functioning, not high functioning or low functioning because I've seen what low functioning really is.

This boy actually does have speech. He seems more Level 2 than Level 3. He is also able to write and draw. I'm not sure about his intellectual level.

Being able to say a word or two doesn't mean someone isn't nonverbal. The difference is, you can't have a conversation with a nonverbal autistic. And a nonverbal autistic can't explain things that are causing a problem or whatever. Verbal means actually being able to converse, not just saying hi to someone. Even a bird can say hello.

I'd say the kid in the video is either mild level 3 or severe level 2.

Last edited by EzraS on 07 Apr 2017, 8:30 am, edited 1 time in total.

You could have a conversation with this boy, I believe.

You couldn't speak with him, or reason with him, during his outburst, though.

You could see that he is not extremely "low-functioning."

Hard to say. He didn't seem like much of a conversationalist to me. He's definitely not extremely low functioning. But I think maybe he's closer to a level 3. It's really hard to work with just 3 numbers. That's why I like doing 1 through 10.

Also it goes up and down depending on what areas of function are involved.

Yep....that's true. it could even depend on whether he's having a good day nor not.

I am going against my usual policy of not "diagnosing" based on videos to correct some common misinformation I see on this thread and often elsewhere.

If what you see in the video is a typical day and it well could be because the mother is saying "this is autism" my guess is severe high functioning autism.

He is verbal and understands the concept of sorry meaning he has average to above average intellegence which is the definition of "high functioning autism"

He seems very easilly triggered into meltdowns which could be described as a meeting the requirements for severe social communication impairment. The video is too short to guess about restricted repetitive behavoirs.

I suppose that when the film was made, the only diagnosed (or only commonly diagnosed) form of ASD was extremely severe (non-verbal, uncommunicative, generally completely unable to function). Thus, Raymond may have been considered 'high-functioning' as he is able to talk and communicate to some degree etc.; however, by current standards, he would probably be considered moderate.

When Asperger's Syndrome was a diagnosis recognised by the DSM, (I think) it would have overlapping traits, and be somewhat of a subset of HFA. In my opinion.

I wonder if anyone (who has access) has attempted to use one of the autism severity rating scales on Rain Man.

I'm not sure what average to above intelligence means based on someone saying a few words and coloring. None of that requires an IQ above 70.

Severe autism doesn't mean being a complete vegetable.

Here's a couple of videos of a kid identified as having severe autism. He can talk, he can respond, he can do certain things. He's like kids at my school with severe autism.





This is a another severely autistic kid.