TYPES of ASD individuals from a professional source

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I think this is really interesting -- certainly far from perfect (the apparent assertion that one's level of functioning is very unlikely to ever improve, relative to one's peers, beyond what it is at age 8 is particularly galling to me), but really interesting nonetheless.

This part of the WISC description really resonated with me:

It never occurred to me that my peers might have been less brutal to me if I were a bit more "disabled." Maybe it's true, maybe it's not... I don't know. I do know that adults (including my parents) consistently dismissed my concerns and generally just got everything wrong. They didn't seem willing or able to believe the severity of the bullying I suffered they apparently didn't didn't think my issues were severe enough for me to be autistic or otherwise neurodevelopmentally challenged. They basically identified me as a neurotypical kid with severe anxiety. (The only actual diagnosis I ever got was OCD and I'm not sure I even have that or ever did.) In retrospect this makes little sense to me: if the bullying wasn't that severe, and my behavior was as extreme as they could see it was, then how could they not consider the possibility that I wasn't as neurotypical as they thought? Or if I was neurotypical, but I was exhibiting this extreme behavior, how could the bullying I was reacting to be anything but extremely severe? (Never mind that I described it to them, and no one other than my parents ever really accused me of lying, but they nevertheless seemed to think that it was something I'd be able to cope with if I didn't have an anxiety disorder, which is completely absurd.) Of course the truth is that I was being bullied severely and (and indeed because) I was autistic, but they managed to get both wrong. I'm not really sure how you misidentify an extremely severely bullied autistic kid as a neurotypical kid with an anxiety disorder who is being bullied mildly enough that you make it your main goal to teach him how to cope with the bullying (!), but apparently it's possible. (I guess there is the possibility that they understood how severely I was being bullied but thought I should have been able to cope with it anyway, in which case they were just psychopaths with absurdly high expectations of others.)

Also, the bit about no one adult being monitoring one's functioning by middle school is very interesting: I'm not sure I really need an adult to monitor my functioning, exactly, but I do think the rapid increase in the severity of the bullying I faced then was facilitated by the fact that no one adult was responsible for my safety/well-being throughout the day, and by the increase in the (admittedly still short) amounts of time during when no teacher was around to protect me. (I won't say no adults because lunch/recess/hall monitors were totally useless and in some cases were pretty much bullies themselves, as is rather common in cases of poor training, low pay and elevated power over others [as exhibited by many security guards and airport security personnel, for example]).

I believe I fluctuate between ESC and WISC depending on who I am with and whether or not I'm monitoring myself.

Last edited by AllieKat on 10 Aug 2011, 3:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'm sort of torn between WISC and RSC. Let's see:

WISC:
* appears typical at first glance - yes
* subtly awkward and odd - yes
* aware that I have thoughts about others and they have thoughts about me - yes, even at 5 or so I remember a kid calling me a baby and I wondered what about my behavior could've possibly seemed babyish to him (I was very angry about it, too!). Often don't know what they're thinking, and I seem to ponder the issue less than NTs do, but I certainly know others think about me
* lack awareness of subtle facial expressions - I can tell angry from sad, happy from scared, etc. But telling flirting from friendliness, fear from anxiety (is there even a difference?), frustration from concentration, etc is really difficult
* discrepancy increases with age - sort of, from 5-12 years I was less and less accepted by other kids as each year went by. Then I was homeschooled for a long time, so I don't know what other kids would've thought of me since I avoided them completely. Now in university I'm starting to have social success again, but it might be more a matter of finding more accepting people than of seeing more NT
* normal to above-normal verbal skills - yes, first words at 11 months and using words like 'prehensile' at the age of 5
* more rigid than others - not when I'm calm, but get me upset and I get extremely inflexible
* more literal - I knew idioms like 'Il pleut comme vache qui piss' (it's raining like cows peeing) but sarcasm confuses me, and I don't like exaggeration (eg 'I'm starving' when you're just hungry)
* very bright, in specific area or global knowledge - IQ of 137, always impressed adults with my knowledge in areas of interest (my 'prehensile' example above was related to my obsession with rainforest creatures), at 14 I was told my research ideas in psychology were better than some graduate students
* executive functioning challenges - that's currently my biggest area of disability, written expression is not hard for me but organization is
* difficulty working in groups - definitely, tend to take over or fade into the background
* get along better with some peers in some settings - at the age of 9 I was actually popular for once at a summer zoo camp, though the girls didn't like me as much as the boys did, and until the age of 11 or 12 I usually had at least one friend my age despite being bullied and excluded
* prefer attention of adults - hanging out with the supervising teacher all recess, I'd say yes
* don't think about how others feel about you while you're interacting with them - this is why I tend to get frustrated with tests of nonverbal skills, because I always do better on them than I do in actual interaction. I can mostly spot the difference between fake and real smiles in brief video clips, but in person I barely register that they smiled
* appear egocentric and monopolize conversation - definitely yes
* withdraw from interactions - when I'm anxious or trying not to dominate the interaction
* after interaction recognize that they've been rejected/treated poorly - yes, often I'm not sure exactly what went wrong but have a vague feeling of doom about the interaction
* keenly aware in upper elementary school that they're doing something wrong - I remember rehersing how to act and what image I wanted to present, while in reality having no clue how to actually present that image
* highly targeted by bullies - I was bullied a lot, especially from the ages of 10-12
* pass most standardized social/pragmatic tasks - well, I got 28 on the 'mind in the eyes test' when a normal score is 22-30
* social anxiety - yes
* OCD - subclinical traits, but I think it's more about sensory issues than social ones
* depression - yes, definitely
* subtle or significant sensory issues - auditory sensitivity, picky eating, picky about clothing textures, distracted by flashing lights or sparkly things to the point where if I pay attention to anything else I'll get overloaded
* talents in music, arts or athletics - fiction writing is my big talent
* voracious learners, especially in science - this is why unschooling was a great fit for me, if given free time I'd spend most of that time researching my obsession, which was usually scientific in nature

RSC:
* claim to be uninterested in others - yes, I wanted friends but would rather push everyone away than let them hurt me
* class clown - not really, I tended to be quietly inattentive, though sometimes I'd unintentionally disrupt class by someone overreacting to my stimming
* seek out people to complain about being misunderstood - yes, certainly, but no one seemed to care
* attention seeker - I was generally happiest having one-on-one interaction with an adult, but I'd rather be ignored than punished. However adults often mistakenly thought I was attention seeking with my misbehavior, when really I was protesting something I saw as unfair
* don't blend well because they make the group all about them - not intentionally
* take silent delight in receiving the attention of the group, negative or positive - no, I liked positive attention but felt absolute terror when I got negative attention, I remember during conflicts with teachers silently telling myself 'they can't kill me' because part of me felt my life was in danger. But I doubt adults realized just how much I dreaded those fights, since I dreaded changing to appease them even more
* black and white 'they like me or don't like me' - yes, I divided people I knew into enemies or not-enemies and got very confused when someone didn't fit their role
* don't understand how my own actions impact how others react - I never thought as a kid about what the other kids would think about me when they saw me have a meltdown with a teacher, I honestly thought only the recipient of my meltdown would care about it
* feel bright and misunderstood - yes, except in fits of depression where I felt stupid and worthless, but I hid that from others because I didn't want them to win by making me miserable
* feel that others are idiots or jerks for not liking them - definitely yes
* openly defiant to those who don't agree - yes, I could out-stubborn pretty much anyone
* when they do connect can be very sweet - my parents were always baffled at how my teachers described me, because they knew me as a wonderful, kind-hearted girl with a great deal of empathy for people in suffering
* exuberant with humor but don't realize when others aren't laughing with you - oh, yes, I remember my silly streak as a kid. And the one time I made 'woman in labour' sounds for the male bullies' amusement, not realizing they were actually mocking me instead of laughing with me
* more literal - described this above under WISC
* rigid rules for others to follow - not exactly, more that I didn't want them to have rigid rules for me
* shrug off breaking their own rules - outwardly I did, while inwardly I was devastated. I honestly couldn't help doing things that I knew I'd hate others doing to me. But I could never show weakness by admitting I was bad, even though deep down part of me was convinced of that
* can be quite manipulative - not intentionally, but as a survival strategy I would often use strategies like pretending I was an animal, screaming to drown out what they were saying, attacking them so they'd go on the defensive instead of getting at my weaknesses, and so forth
* good at lying but can't tell when others lie - I wasn't as good at lying as I thought, but I did manage to trick people on occasion. I can never remember a single time I spotted a lie without blatant proof
* diagnosed emotionally/behaviorally disturbed - well, I was correctly diagnosed with PTSD. My teachers figured I'd be a juvenile delinquent in my teens
* become school phobic over time - definitely, almost every day I'd claim I was too sick to go to school and usually I did actually feel sick, with psychosomatic symptoms. Even now entering a school building makes me tense up
* anxiety/depression - definitely
* refuse counseling - no, but counselors had no clue how to help me. I'd turn on my verbal self-analysis and turn off my emotions, and we'd do a bunch of talking that never accomplished anything
* try to make helpers feel like fools - no, I tried to make them rethink everything they took for granted, and they interpreted this as a personal attack. Once the relationship had soured I'd start actually trying to hurt their feelings out of defensiveness
* normal to above normal verbal skills - way above normal
* score average or above average on academic tests - well, if I actually cooperated with testing I did
* talents in arts, computers or sports - creative writing talent
* don't perceive self as arguing but rather explaining - definitely true of me
* lash out when depressed - yes
* wear out teachers, parents and siblings - mostly just teachers because my parents knew how to treat me right and my brother learnt it over time
* not much social anxiety due to obliviousness - no, definitely not, but there was no way I'd let them scare me into conforming, so I acted oblivious
* weak flexible thinking - only when upset
* weak abstraction - quite the opposite, but these guys seem to think perspective taking difficulties = lack of abstraction
* poor problem solving - yes, especially once I'm upset
* highly disorganized - yes
* prefer honesty and direct communication - yes

I think I'm probably RSC, but that these guys badly misunderstand the motivations of RSC kids. It's not about wanting attention - from early childhood I felt as if I was living among the Borg and had to fight to keep my identity. I found negative attention highly aversive, but not as aversive as conforming would be. So often I felt like all the available options were bad and I picked the least bad one I could.

well I would say the WISC catagory describes me the best out of those catagories. But yeah I it is kind of unfortunate that the only way I might have gotten better at some of those things would be if this had been discovered when I was a child and maybe had been aware of it......but now I think it is a little late for me to really improve on a lot of that.

Anyway, after reading through it all, I have some comments.

Firstly, it's funny that pretty much everyone who identified as SASC posted a short post once on this thread and then never posted again. I guess that would be the social anxiety, right?

Personally, I find this as offensive as the 'self-diagnosed aspie troll' stereotype. The thing to remember is that no one really wants to be a bad person. Some people don't really get the concept of 'bad', others feel forced into badness by compelling personal reasons. I don't think bad people really exist, because I can sympathize with anyone if I understand them well enough. (I even sympathize with Ted Bundy - I suspect he never even realized what a conscience is, because as a psychopath he was born without one.)

Anyway I don't think RSCs are actually attention-seekers. I know a lot of people mistakenly thought I was attention-seeking. I like positive attention (I'm fairly sociable) but I certainly would rather be ignored than get negative attention. It just looked like I sought out negative attention because I wasn't willing to make concessions to avoid it. And I wasn't willing to do so because the thought of being like everyone else terrified me.

I'm not sure if it's inborn temperament (Newson Syndrome sounds a lot like RSC) or the fact that one notable time I complied to a majorly uncomfortable command, it resulted in 2 more years of sexual abuse than I'd have had if I disobeyed. (When the abuse started I had very little verbal skills, but by the age of 3 I could've told my Mom what was happening and she would have stopped it. Instead it continued until I was 5, and ended through no action of my own.)



I have another theory - maybe the bully was shocked at what he did and that made him realize his behavior was problematic. I was never technically a bully, but I did find myself getting caught up in the action and doing things that crossed by personal line of acceptable behavior. Most of those times I never apologized (fear of seeming weak) but did abruptly stop doing even milder versions of that behavior.



Reminds me of Donna Williams' description of exposure anxiety. I agree that social anxiety type should be along the side like RSC. I think they actually have a lot in common but just express it differently, since RSC kids to me sound extremely anxious. And while they say RSC is generally around WISC/ESC level of social ability, I think there are RSC types at more severe ends too. On the PDA Contact Group forum there are some parents of kids with PDA and severe MR and/or low functioning autism. RSC seems to me to be a broader category including PDA.



I wish I was ESC - if I could choose to be anywhere on the spectrum that's where I'd be. I think my RSC-type stuff was partly me recognizing that not wanting to fit in would be healthier than trying and failing to fit in, and therefore deciding to be weird even though my social awareness was more at WISC level.

Lastly, anbuend's comments (btw anbuend, are you Amanda Baggs? A lot of what you're saying sounds like her). I found it ironic that she didn't fit well into this categorization while I really didn't relate well to the category she suggested. I wonder if most category systems are written with a better understanding of one end of the spectrum than the other, and as a result end up short-changing the end they're not meant for. I could see them making a lot of assumptions about what the more severe categories (CSC and SCSC in particular) were thinking, which from accounts of assistive communication users I knew were not very accurate. On the other hand the A-SHED seems to lump a wide range of high functioning together (no difference between WISC and ESC, which people on this thread, including myself, have found a useful distinction).

Perhaps if we somehow combine the higher end of this scale with the lower end of the A-SHED or something...

Oh! One thought I had awhile back about types of low functioning autistics, from people I've known, is to divide them based on whether they have receptive language issues or not. So we'd have the 'poor expressive' group who generally understand most of what people say, but can't reply for various reasons (generally motor planning type issues, in some cases possibly cognitive impairment putting them in the language stage where kids tend to understand way more than they express). And then the 'poor receptive' group, whose expressive speech may range from non-speaking to speaking but not necessarily communicating, but who have sketchy and inconsistent ability to comprehend what they hear. This can be due to sensory processing issues, difficulty with symbolic thinking, and/or other issues. What do you think of that categorization? And as you go higher functioning both subtypes would exist along with a third subtype who have no trouble with receptive or expressive language.

Holy mother of pearl. SASC fits me so well it's frightening. But I feel that WISC characteristics apply to me as well, but more so when I was a child. "...anxiety often takes root as they age..." is exactly how I feel. I felt that prior to puberty I definitely had more WISC traits but my social anxiety has only continued to grow since then.

Thank you for this resource.

Thanks for posting this - very interesting stuff. I only got a chance to read about half of it and then looked over the categories, but will definitely come back to it.

I see a lot of myself in one of the categories - but it's clearly intended to assist in professional assessment, not self diagnosis.

I am a mixture of WISC and ESC.

NSC, rsc, esc

As far as I can tell, I'm a WISC:
- No language delay
- Verbal skills and cognition outstripped my classmates; I was reading at a 5th-grade level in kindergarten and a college level by 5th grade (I don't remember learning how to read; I've just always known how)
- Most people say I don't "seem autistic" to them
- Rigid and literal-minded
- Executive functioning problems, mainly in the areas of organizing tasks
- Tested "gifted" when I was younger (in the 1970s they had no idea that not all autistics were like Rain Man)
- Sought out teachers and other adults in preference to my age-peers
- Absolutely cannot navigate in unstructured or spontaneous situations (this is one of my big, big meltdown triggers)
- I understand that there are social rules and that they depend on nonverbals, but I usually can't perceive the nonverbals or process them fast enough to navigate social situations in the rare instances that I do perceive them
- I can't figure out what people are thinking or saying, because I can't pick up on their nonverbals
- Sensory overload problems
- Dysgraphia
- I have social anxiety and have always had depression

I also realize that working as a college teacher makes it possible for me to avoid any situation where social nuance is a real problem. Teaching classes and office-hour discussions with students do not involve social nuance; they are never small-talk situations and are always focused on an area of my expertise. But when I'm not at work, almost all of my interaction with other people takes place either online, or in a structured setting where small talk isn't important or wanted (for example, a class I'm taking as a student; I arrive with my husband, who's taking it with me, and make a point of ignoring any advances under the excuse that I have to get out my books, laptop, etc. He covers for me and fields the questions coming our way because he's NT and good at this small-talk thing).

I don't go to parties. I'm a gay man, but my husband and I don't go to the clubs or to Gay Pride. I don't go to amusement parks unless my husband or my best friend (my two NT interpreters) is with me. I don't go anywhere where there's crowds if I can possibly find a way to avoid it.

I wish this had been available to the school psychologist forty years ago.

I do not find it funny. I think I would walk away and keep walking to the train station. If I noticed, I would think that it is weird.

i am ESC. ...However, I did not ever get any kind of help from anybody nor I had the good experiences described there. Everything else fits perfectly.

Thank you for posting this article - a really fresh perspective and the most interesting that I have read in the past year. From what I have observed - of myself and others - their categorisations make a lot of sense. I was intrigued by the observations about who attracts the most bullying. It's a very competent piece of work. I felt refreshed just reading it, I read so much hackneyed and totally predictable junk in my constant search for innovative perspectives like this. They are few and far between.

99% of the articles are written by people who have (or think they have) knowledge about ASDs. 1% of the articles (perhaps) are from people who have both knowledge and wisdom. There's such a difference. This one is in the latter category from my perspective and was both inspiring and informative to read.

I am definitely a WISC.

I was a Challenged Social Communicator in early childhood, but I am closer to a weak Emerging Social Communicator now. I am also socially passive.

I loved reading this article; it reminded me of so many childhood memories.

I wish they had it in a table form....arrrgh!

It is soooooo onerous to compare and contrast sliding up and down a pdf....drives me nuts

SCLC really applies to me. I've had occasions when I was talking to someone, and then after a bit I suddenly notice they are no longer there, even now, as an adult. I also don't always sense when I need to change the topic, or should let others add input.

I think the change in the diagnosis system needs tweaking. It's all right to have a basic, coarse diagnosis of ASD (autism spectrum disorder), but then you need to have a second level diagnosis that fine tunes the diagnosis. Just lumping us all together and leaving it that way does us all a disservice. You can't properly treat people if you don't have a clear, concise, and thorough diagnosis of their condition. Just giving a broad, non specific ASD diagnosis to all of us, without additional and more specific details doesn't provide enough info for proper treatment. ASD should be seen as a diagnostic starting point, with more detail being added as more is learned about the person's condition.

I saw myself in both SASC and WISC. There really isn't that much difference between the two categories. I also saw myself in the ESC category, except that I had no language delay or disability. Again, I see very little difference between ESC, SASC, and WISC.