aspergers vs classic autism

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Im trying to discern the difference between Autism and Aspergers. Im a social tard, always have been and anything regarding emotion makes me cringe when in social situation. But Im incredibly affectionate if that makes sense my boyfriend has classic autism and he thinks Im more like him on the classic side. I have talked to my therapist and psych about it and they both agreed that I have mild variants of autism but dont want to label me.....but i want the label is that strange? I need the label I need to identify. I need to read the criteria and learn how to help myself instead of always trying to change myself to fit others. Thank you for helping.

I might be wrong, because I'm very new to all of this myself, but I thought that people with classic autism had brains that were 100% autistic, whereas people with Asperger's have brains that were only 50% autistic.

That may be completely wrong, so don't treat it as fact. I heard it on a Youtube video made by a twelve-year-old boy with AS, not by some expert in neuroscience. I will be watching this thread to find out what the real answer is, if mine isn't it!

I have just googled your question for you and thought I would share one of the results brought up by Google, for people's general amusement:

http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/in ... 342AAituRY

I've heard it called a lot of things since I joined this forum, but I've never heard AS called anything quite like THAT!

Am I missing something what do you mean:

"I've heard it called a lot of things since I joined this forum, but I've never heard AS called anything quite like THAT!"

Asperger's rules out speech delays and intellectual disability. Autism does not require either of these things.

There's your difference.

My link.

I wasn't referring to anything you said, I was referring to something I found when googling it for you. I found it rather amusing. If you click on the link, you'll see what I mean.

I didn't want to provide a spoiler.

OHHH Duh I get it.....ok I wont spoil it for anyone else either....

That's OK...I just thought it was funny.

Perhaps the person who wrote it mixes up similar-sounding words. I used to mix up acoustic and autistic, and would make people laugh at me by referring to "autistic guitars." LOL

autistic guitars, nice....repetitive sounding Im sure, a nice stim baseline.....would work for me

A psychologist I used to have, who was also a musician, referred to music as "autistic" if it has a repeating theme that could go on forever.

This link might help

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

It should be clear while looking at the criteria that the majority of people diagnosed with AS also fit the criteria for autism or PDD-NOS.

Er, what I mean is not that the criteria necessarily suggest this, but that this is really how it works out.

Last edited by Verdandi on 15 Apr 2011, 6:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Thats not good news for me because i had both a learning disability and a language delay (SPD) so i guess i am 100 pecent autistic

As far as I understand, people with Asperger's have near normal speech development. It was not delayed and their expression and vocabularies are good. Of course it doesn't mean they don't have communication problems, as effective communication is a lot more than being able to talk and understand words.

There are actually a large number of people between Asperger and classic autism. They can talk but not very well, and have a lot of trouble expressing themselves, and even more trouble understanding others. Strictly speaking they're not Aspies, more likely PDD-NOS, but I think we use the term Aspies here quite broadly, basically anybody who's high functioning seem to count.

The three diagnoses do not themselves define severity, although severity is often defined by the traits that are used to distinguish AS, without full consideration for other traits involved.

That is to say, PDD-NOS is not always milder than AS and someone diagnosed as AS may be as severe as someone diagnosed with autism. With studies done of those considered HFA and those considered AS, it seems like severity is pretty consistent for both categories. And I mean in terms of life outcomes, overall difficulties and the like.

Actually, according to the current criteria, a 'classic' autist and an Asperger's person could be practically indistinguishable as the distinguishing criterion is speech delay. PDD-NOS is more of a dagnosis by exclusion and it might group the patients that don't fit enough criteria for definite diagnosis or their symptoms are less severe.
It is considered that among people with Aspergers mental retardation is less common that among classical autists but I am not sure whether this is reliable as many autistic people live and function under the radar and they never attract clinical attention - family therapy, addiction therapy, anger management, that kind of stuff only and it happens fairly often with NTs too. Also, an autistic child might appears to be mentally ret*d because of limited communication capacity but might be, in fact, quite brilliant.
I myself don't believe in setting clear-cut diagnostic criteria when it comes to autism. I prefer the spectrum theory.

Thank you all for the help here, there is a lot of new information to soak up and I do have trouble retaining new info. Just to identify here, I was a late bloomer, late talker, and always had trouble with relating to emotions and take them quit literally. Inuendo is very dry for me and I have a difficult time with it. I don't have mental retardation but I have some affects of trauma, ptsd, dyslexia, and a few sensory, and processing issues wich make it also difficult to recall information and bring it into conversation. Stims I do wich I never realized it was stimming because it was not typical and practically squashed out of me as a child. At 41 Im just rediscovering myself. Id be interested in hearing from others who are comming into this diagnosis of late in age. My general thinking is that aspies seem to handle conversation and context of vocabulary quite well, whereas I have some troubles getting thoughts/feelings into clear defined sentences...correct me if Im wrong here, but that seems to be more on the classic side of things.....Thanks All.