Article: Are Aspergers and High Functioning Autism the Same?

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Have a read of this... (from June 2008).
http://www.articlesbase.com/health-articles/are-aspergers-and-high-functioning-autism-the-same-thing-448862.html

It suggests differences are;

HFA presents at 2 years of age
Aspergers presents at 3 years of age

More importantly, it says this;

Asperger's Syndrome may simply consist of a long-winded single-sided speech about something the child truly enjoys, without any need for contribution from the other people present.

Yes, I was like that as a child. Very much so.

They are the same. AS is just one form of HFA. I enjoyed Attwood's quotes, BTW.

Pretty much the same to me.

From what I hear; by DSM (or DSV, or what ever the catelog of symptoms they put out) V, there will no longer be 'AS', just HFA...

Are AS and LFA the same? One will say yes if they say that HFA and AS are the same; they just differ in severity.

Anyway, Attwood is using Wing's definition of HFA, which is those with delayed speech/cognitive development, but who improve to the social manifestation of "active and odd", rather than staying "aloof" into adulthood. Just read the first paragraph of his paper and you can see this.

You just have to ask people with Asperger's if they think Rain Man has it (the filmed depiction); he's a perfect example of the aloof type of person with HFA; I haven't seen many people say that Rain Man has AS, even though it's an accurate depiction of HFA.

Some have the opinion that AS is characterized by higher verbal IQ while HFA is characterized by higher performance IQ. Under this scheme I would classify myself as HFA. However the label of autism didn't apply to me because I didn't have a speech delay and there's no separate diagnosis for HFA (regular autism without speach delay) in the current DSM.

I'm either HFA or AS or PDD-NOS but I don't care.

As far as I can tell, they're nothing but labels.

Tony Attwood had it in a great graph in his latest North American Seminar. He said children can start out 'normal' and then degenerate to low functioning autism, and some children start out low functioning and then generate to high functioning autism. He said people that start out with low expectations that improve do better growing up then Asperger's Syndrome kids that start out like normal but never catch up to normal.

AS means we don't have the speach delay that high functioning autism does.
That and an IQ difference.

Merle

The article's kind of bogus anyway, with the "regression at two" thing. Most autistic kids are autistic from birth. And another "Aspies are not withdrawn" (many are) "and don't show empathy" (uhh... yeah, that's a misconception, true of a minority if at all). And the article goes suddenly from common-speech to jargon when they start quoting the DSM word-for-word. Plus there's a word left out ("unlike"--first sentence, last paragraph) that changes the meaning altogether.

Really, it sounds like whoever wrote it based their ideas off the DSM and the first page of Google results, with no prior knowledge of what autism even is.

But yeah, they're so close as to be functionally identical. It's not just "many crossover symptoms"--it's almost nothing but crossover. Depending on the doctor, you can get one or the other as you please. In my estimation, about 90% of people diagnosed with AS could also be diagnosed with Autistic Disorder, and the remaining 10% are on the diagnostic borderline between AS and typical.

There was not a choice for what I believe. I don't believe that aspergers is the same as high functioning autism, but they do share many of the same characteristics.

i am dx'ed AS through Minds and Hearts (Attwood's clinic.) My nephew is dx'ed HFA from specialists at one of the major kid's hospitals in Sydney. (he had language delay and i did not. His language delay is now fully bridged at 4 and half years of age.)

There are other family members who would be dx'ed AS or HFA if they so chose to present for a diagnosis. the label would probably depend on where the dx occurred.

Interesting to note - they are talking about my nephew's dx as being reinterpreted as AS - which just might indicate there is less rigidity in the classifcations here in Australia (amongst ASD specialists) than there used to be.

I am AS and i am also active and odd, but with no language delay.

I still don't see the difference. I'm AS and I don't awkwardly approach people, I avoid and withdraw. No language delay, however.

In theory, they are two different things. In practice, however, they start to look like two points in a bubble of autism.