Should Asperger's be renamed to High Functioning Autism?

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Yeah, that works most of the time.

Except that technically (in the criteria that most researchers use to differentiate), there are autistic people who aren't classified as Asperger's, who have no speech delay in the normal sense, but who have specific unusual elements to their speech development, including echolalia, pronoun reversal, and certain forms of idiosyncratic language.

Do you have an article/further explanation on that perhaps? Anything?

Because I sure know there are people, I'm one like that who are classified as AS and had irregular speech acquisition, echolalia and other oddities I have no words for. Like using words that don't apply to a situation and are unnecessary from the point of view of the parents.

I'm often faced with the attitude that since I had no speech delay = AS, that I must posses excellent language skills and cannot have troubles with spoken language.

No, the name Asperger's Syndrome should not be changed to High Functioning Autism because these are infact two seperate conditions with opposites sides of the braian being largely affected. In Autism (high functioning included) the person tends to have a strong right hemisphere and a weak left hemishere. Whereas in AS, the person tends to have a strong left hemishere and a weak right hemishere which helps explain some of the differences between these two related disorders. Some of the basics are as follows (exeptions exist in any one of these categories but these are the most common senerios)
Autism Asperger's Syndrome
key difficulties with verbal communication key difficulties with nonverbal communication
language delay common language delay uncommon
less verbal proficiency (50% non-verbal) most extensive vocabularies and talkative
tend to have good physical balance poor motor cordination and spatial dif. common

I don't think I've ever heard of people separating autism and Asperger's by left or right brainedness. Do you have any studies that back this up? I also think that in general autism is marked by poor gross and fine motor skills, I haven't heard of many autistics being famous for having good physical balance.

I really don't think that HFA and AS are clearly different, and because HFA is not in the DSM most people would think it's just another name for AS.

How about just calling it all autism, but have type I, II, and III? Or maybe a IV and a V.

I've heard it, but mostly in pretty antiquated literature, and I don't believe it (most right-brain left-brain stereotypes are myths anyway). Recently I've heard different divisions if I've heard them at all.



Actually while autistic people often have motor problems, they're not all in coordination.

One stereotype of autism (that I fit as a child) is the kid who climbs everything and balances precariously and never falls and that sort of thing.

I nonetheless have motor problems, which fall more into the area of something like voluntary-motor planning (and have gotten more and more pronounced throughout my life) than some sort of overall coordination deficit. I had trouble with actions that I tried to do myself, but if there was something to climb or whatever, which triggered me into action, then I could be quite agile. So I failed agility tests in gym class but could scale and balance on trees and fences rapidly in ways that were downright scary to watch from what I heard.

I had problems I used to think were general fine-motor problems, such as with handwriting. But obviously I have good fine motor coordination because I can type rapidly. It turned out the handwriting problems (which basically result in awful pain) were a physical problem due to lax finger and thumb joints rather than a problem with fine motor coordination in general.

There was one study, came out sometime within the last couple years, in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. It deals with motor deficits in autistic people, and describes different motor deficits in different autistic people, with some having problems with coordination itself, others having motor planning problems (or something like that), and these being related but not the same thing.

I'm paraphrasing badly so if I mistype it then trust the article over me. It's worth looking up if you've got journal access. I can't remember the title but it should be obvious if you look through the titles.

I've read of some similar things to what militarybrat has posted. Basically, HFAs are more likely to have strengths in the visuo-spatial domain (and weaker verbal skills), and Aspies are more likely to have strengths in the verbal domain (and have weaknesses in the visuo-spatial domain). However, there are Aspies who have strong visuo-spatial skills, so it's not really that clear-cut.

Additionally, I have read that HFAs can have excellent fine motor skills, while Aspies generally have poor fine motor skills. If I can locate the book I read about this in, I'll post it. Unfortunately, right now I can't. I've actually seen these distinctions made a number of places, but there is one book that summarizes the HFA/AS debate really well (if only I can find it).

Additionally, I am writing my Masters paper in speech pathology on prosody in HFA and AS, and most studies have found differences between the prosodic characteristics of HF auties and Aspies. For one thing, Aspies generally produce prosody closer to "typical" prosody, but there are other differences as well. However, since it is not clear how prosody is related to other language abilities, it is possible that Aspies have more typical prosody because they have superior language skills in general (or at least did not have a delay as children). Anyway, the debate continues, but it is definitely not clear at this point whether AS can really be considered a separate entity from HFA, as there are valid arguments on both sides.

I really like it as it is. When people hear Autism they tend to freak out. Where as with Aspergers, you have to explain it before they have a general idea of what it is.

I like this idea. They ARE all part of the one thing, but it's like diabetes. Types 1 and 2 have totally different cause and treatment.

It would take a long time to pass into mainstream use though and perhaps 5 numbers is just too many.




My brother with classic autism (Not HFA) has horrible fine motor skills, so I don't think all HFAs would have excelent motor functions.

There does seem to be a trend toward Aspies being verbal and HFAs being visual though. Both my brothers work visually and I'm somewhat more verbal. At the same time, my pre-mentioned brother scored lowest on the visio-spatial area of his IQ test.

But then there's also the fact that in spite the fact that most of the time I'm thinking verbally, I can very easily imagine 3D objects and their affects on each other. I also have an extremely competent visual mind.

Perhaps the difference lies in social areas? Like maybe HFAs are more off in their own world and in less need of social contact?

The study I was refering to is from my abnormal child psychology textbook edited last year. I don't have it with me right now so will have to get back to you once I'm at home, or if I have time (I'm in the middle of a few papers right now) I can do a psych database search for the study itself as my school library has a great network. The weak/strong hemishere argument is in relation to the neuroplasticity of networks in an individual's brain (ie their spatial-visual secter in the right hemishpere or verbal in the left and one is strong or weak in relation to the other). It doesn't mean that they have a weaker or stronger brain than anyone else, I don't think I was clear and some confusion arose in later posts. A key note to remember is that neuroplasticity slows but doesn't stop developeing.
High Functioning Autism isn't the name of a type of Autism it refers to people with autism function at a high level. Low functioning would indicate a severe case while high functioning would indicate a mild case. The terms arise because of the different ways people are affected. In the popular sense people equate Autism and Asperger's Syndrome because of their many simularities, but they have some key differences which can be noted back in Kanner and Asperger's early papers. Because pop culture tends to see them as the same disorder (even though they are two) and aspies tend to be high functioning with regards to the spectrom as a whole, people think HFA is merely another way of saying AS. Yet, auties can be high functioning too; its not just reserved for aspies.

That would be a conflict because more HFA are in special school than Asperger Syndrome.

I mostly just say that I have HFA, since it requires less explaination. I only use Asperger's when I have to be specific.

They're the same thing just a fine line from telling them apart.

It depends.

The manifestation of autistic disorder [without mental retardation] and Asperger's disorder as of the current DSM-IV-TR are different, which is most likely due to the greater severity of the former's overall global [ASD] impairment.

Those who challenge this will tell you there are differences between the two, it's just that they have more in common than they don't, and clinically, their treatment and outcomes are similar.

I'd call them all "Autism Spectrum Disorders", and be done with it.

Of note, Gillberg's AS criteria, which were in place before Tantam's [of the DSM-IV], includes the possibility of a delay in the acquisition of speech, it's just that one needs to catch up as they develop.

Concerning the right and left-brain thingy, it's inconclusive as of now (I posted a link awhile back, but it's easy to find on a simple Google search).

It seems to me that nobody quite knows for sure what "Autism" and "Asperger's Syndrome" are. And I don't mean the public-- it seems to me that even the medical community is wobbling back and forth on a lot of stuff.

My main comment is that Asperger's is a pain in the neck to spell. Let's look at google:
"asperger's syndrome" 1,040,000 hits.
"asperger syndrome" 982,000 hits
"Asperger's syndrome" 4,410 hits (with link to first spelling)
"Asperger syndrome" 4,190 hits (with link to second spelling)
"Asperger's syndrome" 5,760 hits (link to first)
"Asperger syndrome" 5,760 hits (link to first)

Assperger's, assberger's and a couple of other spellings didn't turn up anything numerically relevant. (Though I was highly amused to see "I am very knowledgeable about Assperger's Syndrome" in one of the summaries, and several other people claiming to have it with this spelling.)

Searching without the 'syndrome' will produce polluted numbers, since it is after all an actual name. But even with this limitation, we get thousands of misspelled hits.

Similarly, I think connecting ourselves taxonomically to the rest of the Autistic Spectrum would probably be better, overall.

I voted for the third option. I think Asperger's syndrome should be called autism, or possibly atypical autism.