Difference between High Functioning Autism and Aspergers?

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b9
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15 Nov 2012, 6:59 am

Verdandi wrote:
b9 wrote:
there are 2 factors that intermingle to produce a result which is seen as "severity of functionality deficits" (disregarding personality phenotypes) .
they are..
1. the true autistic severity, and
2. the intelligence level.

a person who is severely afflicted with autism and who also has a very powerful mind (high intelligence) will seem similar in functionality to a person with almost unnoticeable autism and a very average intelligence.

there are people who have only a tincture of autism who have average minds and are less successful than people who have more severe autism (divorcement from the heartbeat of humanity) and who also have higher intelligence.


I am a genius. I don't mean that to brag, but I scored 3+ standard deviations above the norm on an IQ test administered to me when I was six years old.


well i'll be buggered by an old brown dog!

i never noticed you before your proclamation that you are a genius.
i never read anything written by you that opened up new avenues of thought for me.

Verdandi wrote:
and my functionality is pretty severely impaired.
"pretty" and "severely" are very different words, but i do understand that you do not subscribe to my last post


Verdandi wrote:
It is entirely possible that I misunderstood your point, however.
the word "however" is very vague.

i do not know if you misunderstood my "point" because i experience extreme difficulty in understanding your replies to my "points".
_______________________
so do you feel sad in some way?
i believe you are a genius because you seem intelligent enough (to me) to know not to say you are a genius without being able to substantiate your claim in some way or another.

only very smart people are confident enough to assert their smartness in an arena of contenders to the throne of ultimate relative discernment.

whatever. i have now a desire to play a new song that i have recently thought of (a few minutes ago), but my keyboard is in the rumpus room and i have no idea where the connecting cable is, so i will just have to listen to the song in my head until i can express it externally.

no need to answer because i will see it as "more work to do" to reply.



Verdandi
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15 Nov 2012, 8:23 am

b9 wrote:
well i'll be buggered by an old brown dog!

i never noticed you before your proclamation that you are a genius.
i never read anything written by you that opened up new avenues of thought for me.


Others have indicated something like "Something I wrote that opened up new avenues of thought" to me.

Verdandi wrote:
and my functionality is pretty severely impaired.
"pretty" and "severely" are very different words, but i do understand that you do not subscribe to my last post[/quote]

Pretty in this context is an adverb that means "To a moderately high degree," which puts it pretty close to "severely" rather than being very different from it.


Verdandi wrote:
It is entirely possible that I misunderstood your point, however.
the word "however" is very vague.[/quote]

It is not. "It is entirely possible that I misunderstood your point" is fairly straightforward. However does not add ambiguity to the phrasing, although using it like that is something I try to avoid.

Quote:
i do not know if you misunderstood my "point" because i experience extreme difficulty in understanding your replies to my "points".


Your point was:

b9 wrote:
a person who is severely afflicted with autism and who also has a very powerful mind (high intelligence) will seem similar in functionality to a person with almost unnoticeable autism and a very average intelligence.

there are people who have only a tincture of autism who have average minds and are less successful than people who have more severe autism (divorcement from the heartbeat of humanity) and who also have higher intelligence.


My point is that my experience does not bear out what you stated. However, I may have misunderstood what you had written.

Quote:
so do you feel sad in some way?


Not really. I do have depression, but it's not really "sadness".



wtfid2
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15 Nov 2012, 2:17 pm

awesome thread. i had speech delays as a child, but since i am fairly NT now i was given an aspies diagnosis.


_________________
AQ 25

Your Aspie score: 101 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 111 of 200
You seem to have both Aspie and neurotypical traits


Verdandi
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15 Nov 2012, 9:03 pm

btbnnyr wrote:
Har, you were thinking of who I was thinking of. She makes sweeping claims about eberrything that don't match how the majority of autistic people eggsperience things, in my opinion.


I am not surprised. And she does do that.

I would rather people understand that I have trouble with certain things than believe I really can do those things but other issues interfere.

Like I would hate it if someone were to convince my family that I feel grief just like them, but don't know how to express it. The truth is I often don't feel grief at all, and what I do in response to others' expressions of grief is an attempt at kindness, not any kind of emotional connection.



b9
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16 Nov 2012, 8:17 am

Verdandi wrote:
b9 wrote:
well i'll be buggered by an old brown dog!

i never noticed you before your proclamation that you are a genius.
i never read anything written by you that opened up new avenues of thought for me.



Others have indicated something like "Something I wrote that opened up new avenues of thought" to me.
why would they use the word "I" if they are referring to you?


Verdandi wrote:
and my functionality is pretty severely impaired.
b9 wrote:
"pretty" and "severely" are very different words, but i do understand that you do not subscribe to my last post


Pretty in this context is an adverb that means "To a moderately high degree," which puts it pretty close to "severely" rather than being very different from it.


i can not understand how someone can use the word "pretty" when describing intensities of things that they consider merely to be amplified to a point that is somewhat above average. i have always understood the word "pretty" to mean "visually attractive".

i think that it started out as a "wild western" type of colloquialism. like "that's a right purdy situation you got yourself into there" which would be only fathomable if the word "purdy (i.e 'pretty')" collaterally referred to a situation that one can not take one's gaze from due to any reason including fear of disaster as well as lust.

Verdandi wrote:
It is entirely possible that I misunderstood your point, however.
b9 wrote:
the word "however" is very vague.

It is not. "It is entirely possible that I misunderstood your point" is fairly straightforward. However does not add ambiguity to the phrasing, although using it like that is something I try to avoid.

the word "however" is redundant in your sentence i believe. it is an unnecessary afterthought.

Verdandi wrote:
b9 wrote:
i do not know if you misunderstood my "point" because i experience extreme difficulty in understanding your replies to my "points".


Your point was:

b9 wrote:
a person who is severely afflicted with autism and who also has a very powerful mind (high intelligence) will seem similar in functionality to a person with almost unnoticeable autism and a very average intelligence.

there are people who have only a tincture of autism who have average minds and are less successful than people who have more severe autism (divorcement from the heartbeat of humanity) and who also have higher intelligence.


My point is that my experience does not bear out what you stated. However, I may have misunderstood what you had written.


well i only repeated what my psychiatrist told me during the years that i was her patient.
i do not think that you define a rigid criterion for AS by merely being "you" who has AS.

it made sense to me and i am not a parrot. higher intelligence will provide enhanced intellectual power to enable careful analysis to result in deductions that can allow one to formulate "appropriate" responses that are almost as effective as "intuitive instinctive reactions" which are the basis of what i calculate "empathy" to be.

you may not be a valid example of what i spoke about, but you should not extrapolate your subjective reality into your expectations of how other AS people think.
neither should i. i was not self extrapolating but you were.


how can a genius
mis-understand a dunce?
maybe it is - due - to
the dunce just thinking once.

first - imp - ressions
are the truest one can see

and everything else than the root of truth,
is inedible to me.



Tuttle
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16 Nov 2012, 11:33 am

b9 wrote:
it made sense to me and i am not a parrot. higher intelligence will provide enhanced intellectual power to enable careful analysis to result in deductions that can allow one to formulate "appropriate" responses that are almost as effective as "intuitive instinctive reactions" which are the basis of what i calculate "empathy" to be.


When it comes specifically to the "empathy" type responses, I've found this true for me to some degree. I have high IQ, and I can deduct what responses are appropriate in some situations to the point where I can appear average. My IQ would make it expect to be much higher than average, but I can force it up to average. Other situations I am still two standard deviations below average.

However, either way that's not all there is to autism, and the rest of it is disabling.



sbarne3
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16 Nov 2012, 12:04 pm

Tuttle wrote:
When it comes specifically to the "empathy" type responses, I've found this true for me to some degree. I have high IQ, and I can deduct what responses are appropriate in some situations to the point where I can appear average. My IQ would make it expect to be much higher than average, but I can force it up to average. Other situations I am still two standard deviations below average.

However, either way that's not all there is to autism, and the rest of it is disabling.

When my IQ was tested my overall score was just average because although I scored "above average" on some portions, on other portions I scored "mildly impaired" so it lowered my overall score... It is my understanding that this is typical of most of us on the spectrum



Verdandi
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16 Nov 2012, 12:21 pm

b9 wrote:
why would they use the word "I" if they are referring to you?


They didn't. My point is that others have complimented me on my insight. That you haven't is not really significant. A lot of people haven't. And a lot of people have. I don't think it means much in terms of what my IQ measures as.

Quote:
i can not understand how someone can use the word "pretty" when describing intensities of things that they consider merely to be amplified to a point that is somewhat above average. i have always understood the word "pretty" to mean "visually attractive".


Words often mean more than one thing. In this context, it means what I said it means. In another context, it means what you said it means. I rarely use it to mean what you say it means, and I actually dislike that usage.

Quote:
the word "however" is redundant in your sentence i believe. it is an unnecessary afterthought.


Then do not worry about it.

Quote:
well i only repeated what my psychiatrist told me during the years that i was her patient.
i do not think that you define a rigid criterion for AS by merely being "you" who has AS.

it made sense to me and i am not a parrot. higher intelligence will provide enhanced intellectual power to enable careful analysis to result in deductions that can allow one to formulate "appropriate" responses that are almost as effective as "intuitive instinctive reactions" which are the basis of what i calculate "empathy" to be.


Here is an article that counters what your psychiatrist said:

http://sfari.org/news-and-opinion/news/ ... -in-autism

the article linked above wrote:
Regardless of the test, IQ may not be the best indicator of the ability of a person with autism to navigate the real world. "An individual's level of functioning can more impacted by co-morbid mental health problems than by IQ — and this is particularly true for adults," says Peter Szatmari, head of child psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences at McMaster University in Ontario.

A person who scores 125 on an IQ test — and thus considered high-functioning — may in fact be considerably impaired in daily activities.

Levels of functioning can also change over time, Szatmari points out. In a multi-site Canadian study called Pathways, he and colleagues are looking at how children with autism progress from diagnosis through grade 1 and, ultimately, grade 6.

The team is seeing astonishing variability in both language skills and behavior in the 18 to 24 months following diagnosis, he says. "There's so much change that the IQ tests can't capture the diversity of kids."

Even in the very limited arena of academic achievement, IQ may be less relevant than is commonly assumed. For example, Estes' study, published 2 November in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, reports that IQ does not accurately predict academic performance in most high-functioning children with autism in regular classrooms2.

Some did better on spelling and reading tests than their IQ would predict and some did worse, even though IQ is tightly tied to academic achievement in healthy children. What's more, children in the study who had better social skills at age 6 showed higher levels of academic achievement at age 9, regardless of IQ.

A population study of more than 8,000 twin pairs in the U.K. published in February looked at the association between autism traits and intelligence in 145 children diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder by age 7. Autism traits and intelligence were both stable over time, but there was only a modest association between the two, suggesting that autism traits are independent of intellectual functioning3.

There is nothing inherently wrong in studying individuals classified as high-functioning rather than a more diverse population of people with autism, Charman says. Still, he adds, "people need to be cautious and remember that it's not a cut that represents some true boundary in nature."


Not just me, but something that has been demonstrated to some extent in research.

Quote:
you may not be a valid example of what i spoke about, but you should not extrapolate your subjective reality into your expectations of how other AS people think.
neither should i. i was not self extrapolating but you were.


I was not, as I had already read research that supported what I had said. I did forget to mention the research or I would have linked it in my initial response. You made a blanket statement about IQ and AS and I pointed out that I do not fit your model, which is a valid counter to sweeping statements such as you made. I did not say that all people diagnosed with AS are like me, and I often think I do not have a lot in common with many people diagnosed with AS. For someone who spent time picking apart the words I used, you certainly read a lot I didn'twrite into what I did write.



Verdandi
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16 Nov 2012, 12:23 pm

Tuttle wrote:
When it comes specifically to the "empathy" type responses, I've found this true for me to some degree. I have high IQ, and I can deduct what responses are appropriate in some situations to the point where I can appear average. My IQ would make it expect to be much higher than average, but I can force it up to average. Other situations I am still two standard deviations below average.

However, either way that's not all there is to autism, and the rest of it is disabling.


I do this too, but I do not do it automatically, and I am not always able to produce a "correct" response to a given situation. Sometimes, I don't really want to take the time to do so.



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16 Nov 2012, 12:46 pm

sbarne3 wrote:
Tuttle wrote:
When it comes specifically to the "empathy" type responses, I've found this true for me to some degree. I have high IQ, and I can deduct what responses are appropriate in some situations to the point where I can appear average. My IQ would make it expect to be much higher than average, but I can force it up to average. Other situations I am still two standard deviations below average.

However, either way that's not all there is to autism, and the rest of it is disabling.

When my IQ was tested my overall score was just average because although I scored "above average" on some portions, on other portions I scored "mildly impaired" so it lowered my overall score... It is my understanding that this is typical of most of us on the spectrum


That is typical for most people on the spectrum. However, that's not what we're discussing... We're currently questioning how people with abnormally high IQ present in terms of functioning level.

Personally I actually had an abnormally even result on my IQ test, I didn't have a standard deviation between subtests. People in the passive subtype do tend to have more even results but mine is particularly even. But I am high IQ, and my IQ does allow me to use logic in some situations to make up for a lack of intuition.

It just doesn't allow me to not have any of the other issues with autism. I still have meltdowns and shutdowns and executive functioning issues and major sensory issues, and bad alexithymia, and word finding difficulties, and no clue how to communicate with people, and issues with getting overwhelmed with things that others find simple. I still don't know how to live a normal life, still see no way to, and still am very much disabled. I'm still struggling with day to day tasks.

What I've ended up as is someone who presents as a strange combination of things that are expected and unexpected. Things I can compensate for and things I can't compensate for, and as I get overwhelmed and overloaded, which I do really easily, I lose skills easily.

I don't know if other people present like me, but I know this is what I can do in terms of compensating with IQ. I know IQ lets me reason out how people think but only if I understand it. I can't make sense of things that make no sense. I can't make up for intuition entirely at all. But I can do enough to get by, in a way that not everyone can.

But as soon as emotions get involved in certain ways I have no bearing on anything and it doesn't help me a thing. As soon as my emotions get involved its even worse. However, I can read body language of my dog even if I can't of people.

When it comes to understanding why people did things, I might be anywhere from approximating "average" to much lower. But someone with a high IQ should have a matching ability to do this. Unless they are needing to do it manually struggling through it because of their autism.

But, when it comes to something like getting myself food - this is a common example I use because its been causing so many problems lately - I will literally at times go into the kitchen, not be able to figure out what in the kitchen I can make and eat, even though I know I can make pasta and there is pasta in front of me, will stand there searching overwhelmed, end up giving up and going back to my computer, and either not eating until someone either comes home, eating something like a can of cranberry sauce later, or finally figuring out something I know how to deal with once I'm to the point where I cannot go any longer without food without meltdowns or migraines.

When it comes to knowing how to communicate with people - even with my parents this is a pretty big problem. Even with my boyfriend this is a problem... not to mention people I know less.



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16 Nov 2012, 12:48 pm

Verdandi wrote:
Tuttle wrote:
When it comes specifically to the "empathy" type responses, I've found this true for me to some degree. I have high IQ, and I can deduct what responses are appropriate in some situations to the point where I can appear average. My IQ would make it expect to be much higher than average, but I can force it up to average. Other situations I am still two standard deviations below average.

However, either way that's not all there is to autism, and the rest of it is disabling.


I do this too, but I do not do it automatically, and I am not always able to produce a "correct" response to a given situation. Sometimes, I don't really want to take the time to do so.


I take long enough that the person diagnosing me was able to note how long it took for me to do the analysis. He only tested me in really simple situations, and I think I got them all "right", but I know I don't always get the "correct" response in real life situations.



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16 Nov 2012, 1:00 pm

Tuttle wrote:
I take long enough that the person diagnosing me was able to note how long it took for me to do the analysis. He only tested me in really simple situations, and I think I got them all "right", but I know I don't always get the "correct" response in real life situations.


It takes me long enough at times I've had some people yell at me for not giving them immediate answers. But what can I do? Most of the time I don't perform socially at that level because why bother exhausting myself? Just about the only time I do it lately is when my mother is reminded that her husband died at the end of August, and I try to find something helpful to say.



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16 Nov 2012, 3:50 pm

I can't use high intelligence to compensate in social areas. I am a social dunce. I can infer almost nothing from real-world social interactions. I don't know what to deduce about people are thinking from what they are doing and saying. I can do well on some paper tests like the RMET when I am matching things, but I can't do the RMET if the test is fill in the blank. When I took the Sally-Anne Test, I was sure that I would pass it, but I followed my natural instinct to answer wrong. I have some social knowledge, but I can only use it in eggstremely specific situations. I can't talk about social things either, I dunno what are the words to use and what are the things that the words refer to. It is like I am missing this social module.



Verdandi
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16 Nov 2012, 8:30 pm

btbnnyr wrote:
I can't use high intelligence to compensate in social areas. I am a social dunce. I can infer almost nothing from real-world social interactions. I don't know what to deduce about people are thinking from what they are doing and saying. I can do well on some paper tests like the RMET when I am matching things, but I can't do the RMET if the test is fill in the blank. When I took the Sally-Anne Test, I was sure that I would pass it, but I followed my natural instinct to answer wrong. I have some social knowledge, but I can only use it in eggstremely specific situations. I can't talk about social things either, I dunno what are the words to use and what are the things that the words refer to. It is like I am missing this social module.


One of the issues I have with "if you're smarter, you can mitigate your cognitive impairments through sheer intellect" arguments is that often the cognitive impairments themselves directly impact one's ability to do this. One size fits all explanations where everyone with a certain cognitive makeup will work a certain way does not help anyone.



b9
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17 Nov 2012, 8:23 am

Verdandi wrote:
b9 wrote:
why would they use the word "I" if they are referring to you?


They didn't. My point is that others have complimented me on my insight. That you haven't is not really significant. A lot of people haven't. And a lot of people have.


i can not plug the value of "a lot" into my "estimation" routine, so the execution of my response is hampered. you may be a genius, but you have not crafted a landing strip that my mind can land upon.

Verdandi wrote:
I don't think it means much in terms of what my IQ measures as.
i am quite reasonably sorry, but that sentence does not make sense to me.
whatever. i will read the rest of what you wrote at some time in the future when i feel re-inclined to participate.