Why do aspies have strong verbal skills if autistic

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Is aspergers a form of autism?
Yes 89%  89%  [ 47 ]
No 11%  11%  [ 6 ]
Total votes : 53

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09 Mar 2012, 2:14 am

wogaboo wrote:
One of the most defining characteristics of autism is impaired language skills with many autistics having delayed speech. Bright autistics sometimes have exceptional spatial skills causing many to speculate that Einstein was autistic. They often are so visually intelligent they speak of thinking in pictures.

Yet people with aspergers have the opposite condition. They are verbally skilled but have much weaker spatial skills, indeed their spatial skills are so weak that psychologists can't seem to tell the difference between aspergers and non-verbal learning disability.


So where is the logic behind lumping these two conditions under a single category if they're total opposites? Both involve social impairments, but the cause might be very different. Autistics might be socially impaired because they lack verbal communication skills while aspies might be socially impaired because they lack non-verbal communication skills (I.e. Body language, tone of voice, reading facial expressions etc)

Perhaps there's no such thing as autism or aspergers. Perhaps aspergers is just the label we put on people who have both a non-verbal disability and OCD and classic autism is just a verbal disability combined with OCD.


Respectfully, your understanding of everything you have written is garbled and ++confused. You must carefully read about ASD, OCD, et al. to begin to understand.



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09 Mar 2012, 2:37 am

because autism can happen in diferent ways.



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09 Mar 2012, 9:26 am

My language development was normal but I never had strong verbal skills.
I don't only think in words but in pictures as well. That means that I have to convert these pictures into words and I experience difficulties with finding the right words sometimes. Languages have never been my thing. I don't like learning new languages at all for instance.
I hardly speak in groups, I don't always enjoy talking and I am allergic to people who talk too much in my opinion because that wears me out, annoys me and makes me suspicous. Words don't mean that much to me. Concrete action is more important as far as I'm concerned. I completely suck at social smalltalk. I can't do it and I don't want to because I find it completely meaningless and fake. This forum provides a good opportunity for me to improve my english since my first language is dutch. That is far more effective in my case than taking lessons for instance.



Last edited by pokerface on 09 Mar 2012, 10:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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09 Mar 2012, 9:43 am

pokerface wrote:
My language development was normal but I never had strong verbal skills.
I don't only think in words but in pictures as well. That means that I have to convert these pictures into words and I experience difficulties with finding the right words sometimes. Languages have never been my thing. I don't like learning new languages at all for instance.
I hardly speak in groups, I don't always enjoy talking and I am allergic to people who talk too much in my opinion because that wears me out, annoys me and makes me suspicous. Words don't mean that much to me. Concrete action is far more important as far as I'm concerned. I completely suck at social smalltalk. I can't do it and I don't want to because I find it completely meaningless and fake. This forum provides a good opportunity for me to improve my english since my first language is dutch. That is far more effective in my case than taking lessons for instance.

Although I have the propensity to talk too much at times (and annoy the hell out of others), I can relate to this very well.



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09 Mar 2012, 9:55 am

The reason AS and NVLD are identical in some cases is because psychiatrists are misdiagnosing NVLD as AS.

I'm closer to the NVLD profile myself.

That said, many who have AS have superior spatial AND verbal skills. There are very specific genes responsible for the ability to understand and use language, and only a few have been discovered. It's possible LFA carry a defective version of those genes or lack something else that scientists don't know about. LFA kids also show superior spatial intelligence in many cases.

IMO in "classic" AS you're going to see more people who are spatially, visually, and mathematically inclined which is closer to autism than NVLD is.

Of course you do see some who exhibit weak skills in those areas and still have the social impairments leading to an AS diagnosis.

What is your point, anyway? NVLD is similar to autism. It's often said that NVLD is a very specific type of brain damage where as autism isn't but we don't know if that's true.


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09 Mar 2012, 10:16 am

KakashiYay wrote:
In my opinion the only difference between me, a "high-functioning" aspie, and a non-verbal, classically autistic person is: I can speak, and I can speak well. Countless non-verbal autistics, many of whom lack even bladder and bowel control, once given the tools to communicate, express the same thoughts, needs, wants, and feelings that the highest-functioning of us do. Everything's the same inside our heads, it's just our varying abilities to get it out so others understand that separate us.

You really should watch some movies and videos with "severe" classical autistics who communicate via computers etc. It's remarkable how similar we ASD-ies all are under the surface.


This. HFA amd AS often go hand in hand as far as strengths and learning styles are concerned.

But HFA will often have more trouble using speech effectively even if they are as verbal as an Aspie(with some exceptions of course). That understanding of and use of language makes a huge difference in how someone is perceived.

I cant believe how much I've related to some LFA and even HFA who still have difficulties with speech and daily functioning in documentaries as well but I know that because of the way I use language I am perceived as more intelligent, or at least more normal than they are.


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09 Mar 2012, 10:32 am

People think I have "strong verbal skills". What I actually have, though, is an ability to memorize lots of vocabulary and use it in the same way I've seen it used in books, and to choose words that communicate my point very precisely.

Since this is a hard skill to master for NTs, they assume that I have good verbal skills, when in reality, I have difficulty with some aspects of language that are very basic for NT minds--colloquial speech, using the "right" set of words in the right social setting, tailoring my language to my audience. I don't bother to use different sets of words for different people and so may use very casual language in the same sentence as highly technical language. The ability to tailor language to the audience comes very, very early for NTs, long before the ability to use something like my highly technical, precise style of communication. Because I can do this technical, precise sort of speech, they assume I must obviously be capable of all the things they learned before they learned to do this, because they are "much simpler". Well, they're not--not for me.

Aspies do have language problems; mostly, though, communication problems. If you look at it in a more global fashion, the common thread for all autistics is that there are communication difficulties, in general. (And sensory and cognitive differences, but here I'm focusing on the interpersonal part of autism.)


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09 Mar 2012, 2:10 pm

Callista wrote:
People think I have "strong verbal skills". What I actually have, though, is an ability to memorize lots of vocabulary and use it in the same way I've seen it used in books, and to choose words that communicate my point very precisely.

Since this is a hard skill to master for NTs, they assume that I have good verbal skills, when in reality, I have difficulty with some aspects of language that are very basic for NT minds--colloquial speech, using the "right" set of words in the right social setting, tailoring my language to my audience. I don't bother to use different sets of words for different people and so may use very casual language in the same sentence as highly technical language. The ability to tailor language to the audience comes very, very early for NTs, long before the ability to use something like my highly technical, precise style of communication. Because I can do this technical, precise sort of speech, they assume I must obviously be capable of all the things they learned before they learned to do this, because they are "much simpler". Well, they're not--not for me.

Aspies do have language problems; mostly, though, communication problems. If you look at it in a more global fashion, the common thread for all autistics is that there are communication difficulties, in general. (And sensory and cognitive differences, but here I'm focusing on the interpersonal part of autism.)


This is true too.

Again, I speak as someone who is NT and only bordering on either AS or NVLD but my vocabulary was extensive as a child and teenager. I'd say it's less so now. I sometimes tend toward elaborate language but I think it stood at more when I was a young adult because I was using words that were only unusual or advanced for my age group.

But yes, it's about rote memory and because I had "strong verbal skills" I was hounded by English teachers who thought I should develop my writing more and that I really had potential. I do not enjoy writing and I didn't then.

I HATED it, had an awful time coming up with anything to write about and am not a good creative writer at all. At the end of the day I can put some together that very much resembles good writing but it's basically parroting back what I read.


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09 Mar 2012, 4:31 pm

http://juststimming.wordpress.com/2011/ ... rticulate/


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09 Mar 2012, 4:37 pm

I wouldn't say strong verbal skills at all, unless you mean verbal IQ on tests (but then, "normal" is just the requirement).

People with AS tend to have quite poor speech in anything other than the recitation of factual knowledge. Writing is different though, as there's time to formulate a reply without all of that stressful nonverbal and sensory stuff.