AS vs. "normal variant of personality"

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Lorna Wing wrote something about the diference between AS and a nomral variant of personality:

[The "underline" is mine]

Then, what is the point when we cease to have a "peculiar personality" and begin to have AS?

Not taking, at times, part in sucessful two-way social interactions and don't be influenced by social experiences? Well, many people diagnosed with AS have jobs, friends, are married, etc. This mean that they, sometimes, have sucessful two-way social interactrions (and probably are influenced by social experiences).

Severe impairment? But impairment is, many times, relative to the social context: a fish is "impaired" in land but not in water. In the same way, some individual can be very good at programing computers but severly impaired at selling used cars.

Sensory issues? But (I think) "sensory issues" don't appear in any "official definition" of AS, only in "classical Autism".

There's no appropriate to and fro social communication in people with Asperger's, unless it's heavily scripted, but that can easily be broken by bringing up something unexpected. People can still work, form relations, etcetera, it's just that the give and take of social interaction won't be there. It's simple, really. They're cut-off from external influence for they're so rigid in their thinking and they can't see the views of others.

It can manifest in a few ways, but they're easy to spot.

Read on to the clinical accounts of the patients, and that'll probably shed some light on it and the difference between "normal".

All of the stereotypical symptoms of ASDs that people say that they have are only really found in Autistic Disorder with a low IQ, and she even says it, as you're probably aware.

Very little was known about AS back then. Perhaps Lorna Wing (unknowingly) was actually comparing "mild AS vs. severe AS/HFA" and not "normal people vs. AS".

Not really.

She took it straight from Hans' words (as well as conversing with people in other countries who kept on researching AS), but she added some more symptoms that she observed in her patients. The current diagnostic criteria come straight from this paper.

She compares it to Autism later on in the paper, HFA too (which she sees as being the one that resembles it the most), as well as several other similar conditions.

O, and she describes it here too (the impairment of to and from interaction, and how those with it are outside the normal range):

The dividing line between ASD and NT is "significant impairment". That means it's a fuzzy line, and "normal" versus "mild ASD" isn't always going to be easy to distinguish. That's to be expected; it's a neuropsychological diagnosis that fades smoothly into the normal, not a bacterial illness you can detect with a lab test.

"Significant impairment" is presumed to be defined in terms of what exists without accommodations or unusually ASD-friendly environments. "Significant" doesn't mean "large" here, but "relevant"--that is, more than could occur by chance. Think statistical significance. And yes, that does mean that your preferred "level of significance" (how much impairment you think is important) will affect whether or not you diagnose somebody!

The point would be named by at least some people as the border between AS and BAP but it is less than clear and entirely conceptual as is the point between fitness and being unfit, between warm and hot and between night and evening.

Lorna Wing is not communicating to the average lay person in this article but to people who have particular specialized understandings about words and concepts that might be interpreted differently outside this narrow context. She is also discussing children (not adults) and she makes no claims that children with AS, unlike children without AS, do not ever develop, grow or acquire skills. In fact from memory (it's been a long time since I read the paper) she explicitly stated that predicting prognosis into adulthood was beyond the limited data available to her at the time of writing.

Expanding on the point Danielismyname has made, I went to extraordinary efforts over a number of years to attempt to learn how to converse reciprocally and was still failing at it horribly. Everyone around me knew this and criticized me for it, but not one of them could easily put their finger on the problem because they did not have to explicitly learn this skill and so had little to no explicit understanding of it.

Again, you are interpreting the text as though it were written for lay-people instead of a particular audience who bring particular understandings to their interpretation of the text.

The text does not refer to any old impairment that one could conceive of, but rather of impairment in species typical competencies (or in some cases species typical competency potential) where this lack or deficiency of competency is outside the range of normal and has meaningful impacts on one's life. Not being able to sell a used car easily is not necessarily outside the range of normal, and few people would suffer meaningful impact on their lives as a result of not being able to easily sell used cars.


That's not relevant to whether or not the condition exists though is it? HIV was once not referenced in relation to AIDS, that did not mean either HIV or AIDS did not exist.

I don't see what's with all the referencing really old research lately. I understand the history of the discovery of autism is important, but doesn't there come a time when you have to move on to what people have been researching lately?

Thanks, I don't have Aspergers any more then, you've just cured me!

Depends who's Aspergers we're talking about I suppose.

You need 2 out of 4 criteria to be diagnosed. Only one of those criteria is no reciprocal communication. I don't have that one.

I'm with the "significant functional impairment" piece all the way. It's straight from the DSM.

I suspect it's less of the taking part in two-way interaction than the understanding of it. The difference between a 'geeky' person and a person with AS is that the geek might opt to spend much time with their special interests rather than interacting with others, but when they are called upon to do so, they are able to, despite perhaps coming over as a bore. They have little or no trouble comprehending the actions, motivations and subtleties of others; they simply choose not to become very involved. The AS person, though - even if they want to get involved - still has a lot of difficulty doing so because of that lack of understanding. It's choice versus ability.

This issue is always interesting. Most people I really like and get on with have some kind of all consuming interest, be it music, books, sport, whatever. Yet none of them are diagnosed with aspergers, nor do they have any need to be, (they don't even have much interest in the subject). I have always taken this to mean that social impairment is key in deciding who falls on which side of the line.

My first thought upon reading that quote was that, actually, I do have some meaningful relationships and 'appropriate two way interaction'. Then I thought about it harder and realised that the only people I can really have a good conversation with are my boyfriend and my mother. On the rare occassions I get to have a natural feeling conversation with someone else I feel like jumping up and punching the air in jubilation. And if the paper is talking about children, then yeah, I had nothing even near to a 'friendship' in my early childhood... and all the 'friendships' I had up until I was in my teens were really quite bizarre.

As much as the whole thing is on a sliding scale, this gives me a good explanation of what makes me different from someone a bit awkward or 'nerdy', and I'll probably keep the link to show it to anyone who thinks that aspergers is 'just a bunch of nerds giving themselves a fancy name' or words to that effect.

Maybe Hans just wanted his name up in lights?

In theory, you should have PDD-NOS rather than AS per the DSM-IV-TR if you can participate in the give and take of social interaction (Atypical Asperger's). As the text explains that the social deficits of Asperger's nearly always manifest in a one-sided and verbose approach to others (a lack of social and emotional reciprocity in other words).

Of note, you'll find that they only say "2 of so and so" because many symptoms can't be assessed in a clinical environment. Most times, there's the whole lot as per the descriptions in the expanded text.

Under the DSM, where the line is drawn between Asperger's and Normal is somewhat arbitrary and will remain so until an underlying neurological/genetic/biological condition can be identified.

I have seen different numbers on the prevalence of Asperger's -- 1 in 300 is the most recent statistic I have seen. This fits the prevalence in my son's elementary school where 3 kids have been diagnosed on the spectrum out of all of the students K through 6.

The kids who were diagnosed had "clinically significant impairments" which caused the school to evaluate the kids which led to the diagnosis. There was no debating whether they met this "impairment" criteria and there is a clear gap between those kids and the other students. If we started with the entire student population and tried to determine which kids superficially fit the DSM criteria, we could probably come up with a lot more students -- likely the normal variant of personality -- but these kids would be clearly different than the diagnosed Asperger's group (based on my own observations).

I guess I can't really explain the difference between the two groups, and maybe the DSM doesn't clearly describe the difference either. "Detachment" maybe? I have to give this more thought.

I would like to see more generalized statements include the information--relative to what? By what yardstick are you measuring this?

Relative to the socially accepted way of doing things we may appear naive and peculiar.

Relative to us, society's ways of doing things is insensitive, illogical, boring, superficial, deceitful, extravagant, sheep-like, ignorant, frivolous and rigidly resistant toward innovation. Is there any rational explanation for why we are being judged by these creatures and their social habits? And not the other way around?

It is a common and utilitarian tool for investigation, to find the typical range, and use it as a base-line for comparison.

That the base-line is found by finding a "typical range" does not pre-determine the results. Individuals are measured according to their "adaptivity" to their environment and their relative advantage/disadvantage as a result of traits varying from the typical is then used to measure the adaptivity of a trait.

Deviation from the range of typical can be entirely neutral (in the individual's environment, there is no particular disadvantage or advantage relative to the others of its kind dependent on deviation), advantageous (advantage relative to others arises from the deviation), or disadvantageous (disadvantage relative to others arises from the deviation).

Note the measure is advantage/disadvantage, not moral/immoral. In measuring function/adaptivity, we are not measuring how "nice" we think an individual is, we are measuring their success in their environment.