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

Joe90
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29 Dec 2011, 11:57 am

I'm very different in lots of ways from a severely Autistic person, but not the opposite. I used to have a friend who had a brother with severe Autism, and he was severe. He was diagnosed with severe Autism at 2, he had to go to a special school straight away when he was 4, and he couldn't live with his parents any more after the age of 10 because he got too much for his parents to cope, and even his own mother could not bond with him or even get to know him at all, since he was 100 percent locked in his own world and was just happy dancing around in a dark room, naked and on his own, and if anybody ''intruded'' his comfort zone, he would have a meltdown for hours.

I still speak to my friend on Facebook, and her brother is now 20 but still needs 24-hour care, because he is still just as locked in his own world as he was as a child, and can't learn to do anything for himself. He is still in nappies, and has to wear special pads on his arms to prevent damage to himself because he keeps whacking them against the wall repetitively all day (it keeps him happy). He also can't talk at all, and his sister doesn't think that he has ever looked at anyone in the eye before. He can't even make friends with other Autistics. He's just very severe and that's all there is to it.

OK, I'm not going to lie - compared to him, I feel like an NT. I can express my feelings normally, I can communicate and relate to others, I can make friends, I can learn how to do things for myself, I don't need any care (I only need some support with finding work and stuff like that), I am not locked in my own world, I have self-control, and I keep myself happy by doing things like socialising on the internet, for example. Also I went to mainstream school (nobody even insisted on putting me into a special school), and I coped fine (just needed a bit of support with my work), and I can take part in normal society. Yes I do need help with some things but that's more due to my anxiety levels (which are pretty high). Well, maybe I base things on opinion, but I consider myself as a high-functioning Aspie. I'm not the opposite from my friend's brother, since I share a lot of traits but his traits come out more severe, whereas I deal with my traits a little differently and come out milder.

I still don't say I'm the opposite to NT either.


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29 Dec 2011, 12:13 pm

Nexus wrote:
Sweetleaf wrote:
Nexus wrote:
To make one thing clear, mental retardation usually is a co-morbid of Autism, however not all Autistics have mental retardation.


what do you mean usually, I mean I know it can be a co-morbid, but I did not think the majority of people with Autism are ret*d so I don't get the usually part.


Well it's given that impression by organisations like Autism Speaks. But my real point is the fact that not all Autistics possess mental retardation as a co-morbid and usually the most severest examples the public see happens to be individuals likely having mental retardation too. Hell if one wants to apply semantics on this, I would be branded mentally ret*d on the technicality that I did learn certain things slower than the average person as a child, so it's an issue of perception really.


That is an intresting point.....I personally feel my processing speed is quite ret*d, but that does not mean I am mentally ret*d, as that would indicate I function more like a child than a 22 year old.


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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.

OJani
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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.