Differences between High-Functioning Autism and Aspergers?

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What are the main differences between them?

They are both antiquated efforts to quantify one's place on the spectrum?

Going by current DSM diagnostics, neither exist anymore. Rather, DSM V refers to the level of support one would need based off of their level of disability/effectedness.

Asperger's was used to very generally separate those with HFA. However, HFA was used to say that this specific person doesn't need help, which is not always the case. A person with seeming HFA may need extensive support, but their facade may not show it easily. High anxiety, depression, poor executive function, sensory issues, etc tend to be overlooked when you are a speaking individual, with a family/job. Doesn't mean that those issues don't make life a living hell. Does that make sense?

The short answer is: they are both on the high end of the spectrum and are hard to tell from regular NT folks. But if there was a "speech delay"( if you didnt learn to talk until you were older than most toddlers learn to speak) you were classified as "autistic", but if you didnt have a speech delay and started to talk at the normal age then you were classed as having "aspergers".

But a couple of years ago they eliminated aspergers as a category, and just lumped it with "autism spectrum disorders".

If you are talking about level 1 classic autism vs aspergers, a main separation is delayed speech development which occurs in ca. Other than that, I think they are pretty much alike.

I need extensive assistance. Mainly because of autism, I have never been able to begin working or achieve living independently. Since I began speaking more than 3 words or so, speech was severely unintelligible until age 10-11.
Could Asperger's syndrome be diagnosed if one's speech is unintelligible?

Asperger's required no language delay.

Asperger's does still exist under ICD-10, but if you are in the US, your diagnostician is likely to us DSM V (the newest version of that diagnostic criteria). DSM IV had Asperger's Syndrome as one diagnosis, and Autism as another, with two sub categories of High Functioning and Low Functioning. High was anyone with an IQ level of 70 or over, and LFA as under 70. ICD-10 (used in Europe and some areas of the US, but also in Canada I believe), still has Asperger's and Autism (HFA/LFA) as a diagnosis.

The DSM V diagnosis diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorders includes PDD-NOS, Broader Autism Phenotype (BAP), and a couple other things besides Autism. It no longer featured high/low functioning, but a three tiered indication of how much support a person needs. It also takes into consideration sensory processing differences, either heightened or dulled (feeling too much, or too little). It no longer requires there to be a language deficit as a symptom.

This has a lot of good information if you want to read more about it, and it also explains (better) the differences between the two DSM's. National Autistic Society: Criteria Changes

The functioning labels are usually divided by IQ of 70 or 80 but "High Functioning" and "Low Functioning" have NEVER,EVER been diagnostic labels in the DSM

http://www.autreat.com/dsm4-aspergers.html

Ah, yes, thank you. That is what I couldn't find. I got confused with the DSM IV and how some diagnoses were reported. So sorry. I hate misreporting things.

OP is from the UK, and in the UK both HFA and Aspergers are still diagnosed. When I was diagnosed, on paper I'm aspergers, but my psychologist told me I could use both HFA and aspergers if people asked. When I asked what the difference was, I was told this:

Those with HFA:
- Speech delay in childhood.
- Little to no interest in social interaction.
- Devoid of interest in anything they dont care about.

Those with Aspergers:
- Might not have had speech delay in childhood.
- Can be interested in social interaction, but struggle with it.
- Can show interest, or feign interest.

You are welcome. That high and low functioning are official diagnosis is widely believed even amoung those knowlegable about autism. There is no official "severe", "profound" or "mild" autism official diagnosis. In thev DSM 5 there is Autism Spectrum Disorder Level 1, Autism Spectrum Disorder Level 2, Autism Spectrum Disorder
Level 3

This is a really interesting way to describe the differences. I was diagnosed with ASD via ICD10 and was told that I am quite high functioning. However because I was diagnosed as an adult I didn't have any information about how quickly I spoke so they said that they couldn't determine whether I had AS or not. I didn't realised that there are other differences, other than language delay, which differentiate between AS and HFA. I am not particualrly interested in social interaction unless it is about a subject so that makes sense.

The ONLY reason my husband didn't get the HF diagnosis (5 years ago) was no speech delay.

Even then, the psychologist was still debating because his test scores had so much scatter and his social skills were total trash.

(He was very stressed out at the time. I'm sure that didn't help either.)

These are clinician specific criteria, based off the diagnostic manuals but not actually matching either of them.

A lot of the differences people talk about are not official but made up by individual clinicians (part of the reason that the diagnoses were merged in the DSM and will probably be merged in the ICD is that clinicians weren't all applying the criteria they same way and/or as it was written....sometimes to the extent they were basically making up their own criteria; the other part of the reason was that it could not be proven through research that there were real/significant differences) .... some of the stuff I have seen about differences seems to be just completely made up by laypeople.

The only official differences, as actually written in the diagnostic manuals, are the number of symptoms you have (Asperger's requires fewer symptoms in the DSM-IV, where most of the symptoms are identical) and whether or not you have clinically significant delays in language, self-help skills, adaptive functioning, cognitive functioning or curiosity about the environment (same in both manuals)-- if you had any delays in those areas of development you are/were supposed to be diagnosed with Autistic Disorder/Childhood Autism rather than Asperger's. But that doesn't mean that to be diagnosed with Autistic Disorder/Childhood Autism you needed to have significant delays in all of those areas. And in the DSM-IV, If you met criteria for both Autistic Disorder and Asperger's you were supposed to be diagnosed with Autistic Disorder -- because part of the diagnosis of Asperger's is that "Criteria are not met for another specific Pervasive Developmental Disorder [e.g. Autistic Disorder] or Schizophrenia".

Most people dont seem to know that there is a difference between speech and language (you can have speech delay without language delay, and language delay without speech delay), or that people could be diagnosed with classic autism under the DSM-IV without any speech delay -- one of the communication criteria (you only needed one of four, and only one of them is speech delay/lack of speech) for autistic disorder is "in individuals with adequate speech, marked impairment in the ability to initiate or sustain a conversation with others", one is about use of idiosyncratic speech, and one is about imaginary play and doesn't even mention speech.

If anyone ever wants to look up the official differences, you can read them in the ICD Green Book and here are two the many, many places you can find DSM-IV criteria for Asperger's and DSM-IV criteria for Autistic Disorder.

It seems ASD diangnosis is just as much a clinicion judgement as Aspergers was. "You seem well adjusted job etc you are not autistic" "You meet the criteria but I judge that you don't need a label" "your are not Autistic but impaired enough you could use support since I perceive it as a good way to get benefits I will give you the diagnosis and I get the benefit of charging you for the diagnostic report"

Why most think that eliminating sub categories is going to reduce diagnostic inconsistancy is beyond me. Actually in most areas of life people don't, Autism is a outlier in this regard. All the DSM 5 did was replace a hot mess with a broader hot mess.

Honestly, I really don't think this is true. HFA is basically the same as Asperger's, just with perhaps more symptoms and communication difficulties.

You need to understand the history of psychology and autism to understand the difference.

Leo Kanner was a US based researcher who recognised autism in children considered low functioning with 2 higher functioning children in the 1940s. He published his finding in English and the English speaking research community then identified higher functioning children and called this high functioning autism.

Hans Asperger recognised higher functioning children with autism at the same time as Kanner and published his results in his native tongue, German. It was therefore ignored by English speaking researchers until a UK based German researcher (Frith) translated it into English in 1991.

Asperger Syndrome was included in DSM-IV as a separate but similar condition to classical autism in 1994.

By the time DSM-5 was published in 2013 enough was known about autism to realise that Aspergers was in fact no different to classical autism and it was therefore classified as one condition - autism/autistic spectrum disorder.

High functioning ASD was recognised by English speaking researchers while Asperger Syndrome was recognised by non-English speaking researchers. While different people talk about differences between HF autism and Asperger syndrome there is no actual evidence to back it up. In the same way there is no actual evidence that shows a difference between classical ASD, HF ASD and Asperger syndrome.