High Functioning Autism: Is term worth using?

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Back in the pre DSMV days "High Functioning Autism" or "HFA" was a non-clinical label assigned to those diagnosed with classic autism i.e. delayed speech/communication but who show otherwise normal/above normal intelligence and reasonably able to function in NT society. My daughter falls in this pre-DSMV category/label. Despite not being communicative/verbal she was hyperlexic and obsessed with numbers/math/music. Her paediatrician and teachers (she goes to mainstream school) referred to her as "high functioning".

Today many Aspies refer to themselves as HFA. So I now refer to my daughter as MFA or moderate functioning Autistic to distinguish her condition from Aspies.

HFA means autism without intellectual disability, which includes both people previously diagnosed with AS and people previously diagnosed with classic autism without intellectual disability. It is interesting that people on wp and offline use various categories and labels while assigning idiosyncratic meanings to them, but in research, I have heard people only use the term autism or autistic. I should add that the HF label appears in methods sections of papers to indicate the nature of the participant sample or in titles of some papers, posters, presentations. Most of the brain/behavior/cognition research that is reported applies only to HFA, not autism as a whole.

'High-functioning autism (HFA) is a term applied to people with autism who are deemed to be cognitively "higher functioning" (with an IQ of greater than 70) than other people with autism.' (lazily lifted from wikipedia )

Isn't that most of us on this forum?

This was an interesting read:
http://www.autism.org.uk/about-autism/a ... erence.asp

Personally I like the term high functioning because it implies that we are more able to do certain things than a normal person. It does tend to make people think of Hannibal Lecter though.... Not sure that's such a bad thing, compared to the mental image Asperger's tends to conjur up (anyone seen Stepbrothers?)

This is not true. There is no such implication.
It just means "not cognitively impaired." To try to make it mean more is to delude yourself.

It seems misleading to me. In some ways of looking at it I can be called high functioning since I am not intellectually disabled. But at the same time I am a significant special needs person and require a lot of assistance in basic things and am not to ever be left unsupervised. So is that actually high functioning?

I cant comment about how you (or others who interact with you) perceive yourself. But you can divide basic functioning into a set of indicators. In my daughter's case she is exceedingly "high functioning" in indicators of cognitive skills but "low functioning" in indicators of communication and comprehension. She is able to go through mainstream school classroom now with minimal special assistance but she has no idea how to make friends or interact with other people in a social environment. As a 9yr old her idea of socialising is sitting next to her peers and sharing pens/pencils. playing in a group in the playground and comparing video game scores on her i-pad with somebody else. As communication and socialisation skills are essential to survive independently she is low functioning on those specific indicators....

I think that while autism without intellectual disability is a useful distinction, the implications to people of using high/low functioning make those words not only useless but harmful.

I'll use traits with descriptors. Without intellectual disability, verbal, etc.

I agree, the terms are ambiguous and the literal definitions of the words does not reflect how they are used in terms of diagnosis. Low functioning is certainly a harmful term, who wants to be labelled a low functioning anything?

Another interesting read, no actual science this time tho :
http://whatishighfunctioning.tumblr.com/

Most of the inaccurate conclusions that people draw on wp and elsewhere appear idiosyncratically made up by each individual, what they think high-functioning should mean, sometimes biased to make themselves not fit their personal definition of high-functioning. The opposite of biasing to make themselves fit high-functioning when they don't fit by the official definition, I have never observed. The majority are probably people who personally define high-functioning and also believe that they fit their personal definition (they most likely also fit the official definition). There is minority who go by official definition and don't draw further conclusions and minority who reject the term completely. Amongst the latter minority, I have observed a tendency to use the terms high-functioning and low-functioning as if they mean something without defining eggsacly what, while contradictorily rejecting them as being meaningless. Often, they come up with eggstreme scenarios of individual low-functioning autistic person who uses facilitated communication to test in above average IQ range as support to reject the terms.

On regular basis, I see situations where someone says "oh he's low", and then a child is denied the ability to be taught, because nobody in the room was willing to go and try to work with someone being called low functioning.

On a regular basis, I see people told they are high functioning, and that means they don't need some accommodation or other.

It is useful to do studies, find correlations between IQ and autism symptoms. It is however not useful to deny a student the chance to graduate high school, because people won't help them get an education the way they need it.

This is not extreme scenarios to me, this is everyday life, where I see people denied opportunities because of the language surrounding them. Whether the language should mean these things or not, isn't the point to me. To me, what matters is that people aren't being allowed to get what they need because of stereotypes, and because of how people act when they shouldn't do that no matter if someone is high or low functioning anyways.

People are acting improperly, but I don't think it should be made any easier than it has to be to let them do that. So I' think language that people don't associate with emotions is just better to use, because people tend to be emotional even when its silly.

People don't use these terms correctly, and I don't think there's a large enough group to overpower and get it used properly, while at the same time, I think the way they're used improperly hurts people frequently - I have to watch it.

It is the inaccurate perceptions that are the problem, not the terms.
If you say autism with intellectual disability, people will still think the same thing about the children, that they are not capable of learning, and there is no need to teach them academic subjects, only whatever life skills they can learn.
It is the inaccurate perceptions that should be rejected, esp. one of the most terrible ones about autistic children not being able to learn, and one of the methods of rejection is showing that they can learn in different ways, by actively teaching them in different ways.
So far, much of the rejection of functioning labels has been focused on the HF label and people who are HF making up their personal definitions and claiming not to be HF based on those. They even refer to their LF behaviors to support the idea that they are not HF, but I have never identified particular autistic behaviors as being LF or HF, that seems ridiculous to me.

I agree that inaccurate perceptions are the problems. Where I disagree is that I think that the choice of words used has influence on how many inaccurate perceptions that people actively have about an individual.

Focusing work on fixing the perceptions is what's most important, but the choice of language can help while doing that work. I will use language which I think will have the least effect on the people around me stereotyping my students, and the most effect on them being accurately portrayed. I will use language which has fewest words which have values associated with it - things that people associate with "better" or "worse", "greater" or "less", or even "higher" or "lower" because these do affect how people react.

The word "low" implies "lesser" to people, because of the value judgement English puts on the word "low". The phrase "low functioning" leads to all sorts of stereotypes which vary person to person, because most of them won't actually use IQ definitions and will use things like whether the person will be "non-communicative" or something. If I skip those and just say what they need to work on, and how they need to work, and where they struggle, and how to help them, then people will actually at least listen and give me the chance to work with someone who will commonly be looked over for any sort of math help.

There are people who reject functioning labels for bad reasons. I do however think there are good reasons to reject them, and the fact there are people rejecting them for false reasons make the reasons I see no less of reasons. However, what it comes down to, is really, working on fixing perceptions, while improving quality of life for people (by allowing them the opportunities to actually be treated closer to people instead of subhuman).

Yes this seems that particular autistic traits that are deemed inappropriate such as stimming are conveniently labelled low functioning because on the spectrum they are further away from "normal". The HF end almost NT/fully functional individual is on one extreme end of the spectrum, on the LF end of the "perceived" spectrum is an immobile vegetable unable to communicate. All ASD folk fall somewhere in the middle of these two extremes.

The autism spectrum (ASD) is therefore lined up as a comparison with NT ideals of what it is to be fully functional.

It doesn't make sense to me why stimming is considered a low-functioning behavior, or why people make a fuss of their own stimming, like saying that they were anxious and stimmed for an hour, and how that indicates not high-functioning, as is sometimes written on blogs mostly.

I read somewhere that stimming is a compulsive behavior that compensates for anxiety. This is no different to OCD where people have a compulsion to wash their hands continuously or jump to avoid cracks on the sidewalk.

Infact many OCD traits such as counting, tapping, repeating certain words, or doing repetitive things to reduce anxiety are actually identical for autistics. Given people with OCD are often highly intelligent their repetitive traits don't make them low functioning...yet they are if you are autistic? go figure...