Asperger and autism

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What is the difference between Asperger syndrome and autism?

I am pretty sure. Aspergers was changed to ASD or Autism Spectrum Disorder. So in theory it is most commonly regarded to people as someone with "high" functioning Autism. But, EVERYONE with ASD or Autism etc. is different. Hope that helps at all. Also, Google is a miracle thing and has a lot of these types of answers.

Asperger's is a mild form of autism where symptoms are presented in more complex and less stereotypical ways. People with Asperger's often learn to mask their symptoms and appear almost like an NT, some even manage to master this in childhood. Usually symptoms of Asperger's are barely noticeable in babies and toddlers because a lot of mild autism traits can be typical behaviours in infants anyway, and children with Asperger's usually don't have speech delays. Children and adults with Asperger's are often more likely to appear sociable and some can even learn to fit in with their NT peers (not all, unfortunately).
People with Asperger's often have average or above IQs but IQ does not always dictate ones severity of autism because some people with autism can have high IQs. Asperger's people often go undiagnosed and some are just dismissed as a highly anxious or eccentric person with social awkwardness.

That is what describes people I've met/heard of in my life with Asperger's. To me, Asperger's is as different to autism as what domestic cats are to wild lions and tigers. They are all in the cat family but have their differences (and similarities).

The way I understand it, the primary difference is the verbal abilities. Asperger's have no childhood speech delays, precocious childhood speech and usually above average adult speech. Autism always has childhood speech delays and usual speech deficits that continue into adulthood.

The stated reason for removing Asperger's Syndrome as a diagnosis was they could agree on a set of symptoms. Although I have noticed how it became synonymous with mild autism among NTs. I think the Autistic Spectrum concept is a good idea for diagnosis and communicating your diagnosis to NTs. They should get over their fear of the word "autistic".

The more I look into the use of the word Asperger's the more I am convinced of the huge gap between the diagnostic meaning and the commonly used meaning.

I checked dictionary.com and none of many definitions suggest "a mild form of autism".

Temple Grandin, for example, doesn't use the Asperger's label AFAIK. But then this website https://www.autismspeaks.ca/about-autis ... -syndrome/ labels her Asperger's . Watching her in a Youtube video, I wouldn't suspect any ND https://www.ted.com/talks/temple_grandi ... anguage=en. In this video she talks about the spectrum and calls Asperger's "a mild form of autism" . I give her credit for not using the Asperger's label for Einstein and the like. Try to tell an NT, Einstein was autistic and they will say "no you mean Asperger's, not autistic". You know they are thinking Asperger's=Intelligent people with very mild autism. I'm not saying there isn't some truth to that idea, but it is a bad stereotype which leads NTs to very wrong conclusions. Like mild-autism=Asperger's, autistic=rainman or worse.

I have no problem with anyone self-describing as Asperger's regardless of the symptoms. I use the term Aspie=mild autism on WP, but I am using it as a shout-out to the man who first understood the spectrum, not as shortening of the syndrome. I just hope when Aspie's are asked to explain what they Asperger's is, they are careful avoid spreading the stereotypes.

The people who earn their living labeling and classifying things used their so-called "expertise" to declare that Aspergers was no longer a distinct characteristic, but a subset of general autism.

Over 50 years ago neurological variants were called "minimal brain dysfunction". This was because some children were less easily processed by the mechanical system public education had become. Rather than consider that humans can have different neurologies and attendant responses to uniform stimuli, they decided that there must exists some undetected brain damage to explain differences.

The recent decision to sweep Aspergers into the autism category may be the desire to use a sort of "miscellaneous" category in which to place those variants that are still not understood. The problem is that actual autism was established to describe behaviors that were observed in children with massive brain damage or malformation. This was verified by autopsies as these children usually did not live past adolescence.

This change in classification still carries with it the implication of brain damage. This is why I resist using it as "Aspergers" I see as describing a condition of neurological variation as opposed to defect, damage, or dysfunction.

As most people today have come to derive their understanding from what is declared by "experts", I do not see the return of the general use of the term "Aspergers" anytime soon.

High Functioning Autism is and has always been understood by professionals to be Autism with AVERAGE and higher intelligence. Aspergers is high functioning autism without speech delays before age three. Aspergers was made into a separate diagnosis so that parents would consent to getting their children an ASD diagnosis without the stigmas surrounding the word “autism”.

What was not expected was how many more parents and adults with autism traits would lash on to the term and even form an aspie identity. The Aspergers diagnosis was blamed for a perceived over diagnosis of autism which was costing insurance companies and strapped school districts money so Aspergers was “subsumed” into the autism diagnosis.

During the time Aspergers was a separate diagnosis some that were diagnosed or identified as Aspie thought Aspergers was a separate superior condition to not only autism but in some cases a species superior to NT’s. These Aspie supremacists resented being in a diagnostic manual. When Aspergers was taken out the Aspie supremacists got what they wanted, Aspergers is now widely assumed to be a geeky socially awkward person with high to genius intelligence.

I don’t expect the terms “Aspergers” and “aspie” to drop out of widespread usage anytime soon. If a combination of losing its status as a diagnosis and the revelations of Hans Asperger complicity with the Nazis have not resulted in a major drop in usage I can not envision anything that will.

A major problem with this distinction is the way the autism label has been chopped and changed and added to in recent years, so it’s good idea to find and stick with some bedrock definitions (but I may have got some of the words wrong).

Starting with the label Autistic, which was once part of a range of aspects of the psyche which together determine one’s overall personality or temperament. There is currently debate as to who authored this term, and one of the earliest claims is that it was Eugene Bleuler who used it to label part of his schizophrenia cycles. This isn’t particularly germane to this discussion as the resemblance is temporary and superficial, whereas for those of us whose temperament is overwhelmingly Autistic, the condition is permanent (barring severe brain trauma) and doesn’t usually involve schizophrenia. I suspect it has an origin that precedes Bleuler’s usage as its co aspects, Hysteroid, Manic, Paranoid, Depressive and Epileptoid were in widespread use before we had computer records or even microfiches, so origins are hard to track down.

In his 1921 paper “A Theory of Personality based on clinical experienceAaron Rosanof used all these terms, and his paper is still available in the original form in many libraries.

A wide population study of it, the results of which appeared in Humm and Wadsworth’s 1935 Temperament Scale, also used these terms but they have now been modified for potty PC reasons (Autistic has become Artist, for instance) as did they in Chandler and McLeod’s Temperament and Aptitude Psychometric test, developed from the Humm Scale in the ‘60s, and since widely used to assess job candidates (as was yours truly, in 1981, which concluded I was very strongly Autistic, with only average scores in the other aspects).

A pertinent aspect of this is that C&M once offered a free on line test, which appeared on many aspie sites (including WP) and showed the vast majority of diagnosed apsies to be more likely to have scored strongly in the Epileptoid aspect, than the Autistic, having AE in their result (and sometimes others, three not being uncommon; it is single scores like mine that are unusual, getting just an A, along with the Naturalising measure the test includes, ones ability to adapt to the culture they find themselves in). If you determine which is the Epileptoid category in what is now available in the Humm and Wadsworth paper, you’ll find it quit hard to distinguish from the Autistic/Artist description, but there are important distinctions. Puzzlingly, a small but significant portion of diagnosed aspies scored not an A, but rather a P for Paranoid, which is very different from the Autistic, which suggest there was something amiss with clinical diagnoses (which could have been easily sorted, except researchers will not even consider using that test, marvelously revealing as it was).

There’s more, but I’m running out of time, and besides, I’ve found most here are resistant to this historic background, for reasons I cannot fathom. Perhaps it’ll go down better if you root out the facts yourselves? It’s all available on the web, and not at all something I’ve made up. I’ll add to this another day, and answer any questions you may have, but in the meantime, why not try a little research of your own?

There are those with developmental delay.
There are those without developmental delay , but with what in the USA would be called learning disability
There are those without developmental delay or learning disability .

The 2nd and 3rd would fall into what is/was Asperger's . To my mind those in 2 would be more impaired than those in 3, despite sharing the same diagnosis .

The problem is there is an overlap between the two, about 20% of asd toddlers speak on time and stay speaking with no regression.

So by definition of no language delay they fit the aspie category?

But they have echolallia, hand flapping and a whole load of other stuff that doesnt fit the little proffessor "invisible" symptoms category.

So where do these kids go on the old dsm?

The spelling.