alex doesn't have Asperger's

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I actually find most of it logical except the repeated assertion that more typical == more genuine, that somehow the majority gets to dictate what is "genuine" to everyone else.

If Daniel was just saying that autistic people usually had a lot of trouble with typical social interaction, and left whether that was "real" or not out of it, I doubt so many people would be disagreeing quite so strongly.

People get offended when they have plenty of real interactions (agreed to as real by everyone on all sides of the interactions, at that) all the time, and someone comes along and presumes to tell them that their interactions aren't real because most people don't do it that way.

The language analogy actually isn't so far off. Sign languages were not considered "real" languages for a long time because most people use speech for language instead. Very similar arguments were used for why they were not "real" enough. And... they were totally wrong to do so, and it is offensive to signing Deaf people to tell them that their native language is not a real language or must be "just gestures" because it's not speaking. It's just as offensive to tell autistic people who have perfectly good other-than-normal methods of two-way interaction, that our two-way interaction is not real because it's not the normal way.

So can't you just say that we'll still have difficulty with two-way interaction and leave us alone about whether we think it's real or not? If people on both sides of an interaction view it as real two-way interaction then it's real two-way interaction. It still might not be remotely typical.

Some people may also be forgetting than many experts are now making a claim that Asperger syndrome is distinctly different from autism, and that both disorders are relatively "new," unlike many other disorders which appear in the DSM. The DSM itself undergoes regular revisions, thus the creation of the DSM-IV.

I am someone with Asperger syndrome. I do not have autism. Yes, there are some parts about my personality and my quirks which I hate, but for the most part I'm very happy, with my life and myself. I think that the mixing of people on this board can lead to some animosity. You have people who are friends with or parents of an autie or aspie, aspies with PhDs and full-time jobs, auties who live in group homes with 24-hour supervision, and everyone in between.

The other question in my mind is, "Why would someone, either the individual or their diagnostician, lie about this?" Honestly, there is a lot more money to be made from other psychological diagnoses, rather than this one...if the motivation isn't money, why would the person doing the diagnosing LIE to his/her client? Also, the benefits to the diagnosed person really aren't all that great. SS disability isn't a lot of money, and I've heard that group homes and institutions aren't that great. (sarcasm) And who would want to FAKE this behavior when s/he could just as easily NOT be ostracized throughout childhood (among other things) and perhaps into adulthood?

There is tremendous variability among all people. Let's try not to point fingers just because we aren't all alike.

Anbuend,

Genuine/real in the context I'm using just equates to interacting without an impairment, i.e., how "normal" people interact. Which is saying that those with an ASD have an impairment in typical social interaction, which is defined by the majority who're normal. Language is a funny thing.

No one,

And to add a little more to my missing arm analogy (they say people with an ASD have problems with such--I don't, which is ironic in a way, and I don't have problems with irony either, which is ironic too. Luckily, those aren't needed in the diagnostic criteria): there's a cut-off (ha, they say we have problems with humor too; Asperger was wrong in this case, which was rectified) in the criteria, and said cut-off would mean that you have problems with using your arm in a normal way.

gypsyRN,

The OP's finger pointing died in the first post.

No one again,

I just wish for these disorders to be not misinterpreted in their severity and genuine disability, which in a way is doing those with said disorder a service as those who're diagnosed with such are going to be severely impaired in the ways outlined.

Have you ever read the following article Daniel?

Towards a Behavior of Reciprocity, by Morton Ann Gernsbacher, president of the American Psychological Society

Regarding the criteria:



She then talks about something called the Social Reciprocity Scale that purports to measure social reciprocity and has been used in studies of autistic people:



So basically, most of the things on the scale don't measure the person's reciprocity at all. They measure things either totally unrelated to social reciprocity, or they measure other people's ill-treatment of the person in question (i.e. other people's lack of reciprocity).

About some of the questions, she writes that she considers them cognitions rather than behaviors, because they deal with what is going on inside the person's head. About those questions, she writes:



She discusses an experiment that concludes that autistic people failing to look at eyes, and looking at mouths instead, says something about autistic people's social reciprocity. When she believes that it has more to do with those particular autistic people using lip-reading to help language processing. (When retested, she turned out to be right, I'm familiar with the experiments in question.) She notes that non-autistic people with language problems also look at mouths rather than eyes.

She discusses a different paper where she thinks it's the researchers who lack reciprocity: It's actually an infamous one in the autistic community. In the paper, a lengthy behavior analysis is conducted on an autistic person's "stereotypic ear-covering behaviors" (which were thought to serve no known purpose), and they found that, surprise, the kid was covering his ears every time another child screamed. I remember when autistic people got hold of that one, and we all thought it must be a joke, but it wasn't, people were really being that confused about why someone would cover their ears, and that blinded by the idea that "autistic" means "behavior is pointless".

She discusses experiments from the 1980s where they tried modifying autistic people's behavior to be more typical, and then tried modifying non-autistic people's behavior to be more reciprocal to autistic people. It was the second one that more greatly
improved autistic people's social interactions. Then they trained non-autistic kids in the 1990s to act as "peer tutors" rather than to behave reciprocally, and that did not help the autistic people because it was the non-autistic people engaging in a one-way interaction towards the autistic people.

She quotes first a father's description of his very empathetic and reciprocal son (who is also in other ways "severely autistic" by most measures), and then an autistic adult's descriptions of what needs to happen in relationships:



So then she tries to look at how non-autistic people can behave more reciprocally towards autistic people, and how even just imitating what an autistic person is doing will often create far more eye contact from the autistic person, and in families it even results in more play and other things like that. She says that science even says that behavior programs to develop reciprocity in non-autistic people towards autistic people work very well:



So basically, she's questioning whether a "lack of social reciprocity" is really a part of autism, based on both the history of it, and the measures used to supposedly tell how much of it we have (most of which have nothing to do with actual reciprocity on our parts), and she's also questioning whether a bigger problem is a lack of reciprocity towards autistic people from everyone from professionals (including autism researchers) to other kids as we're growing up.

And the person writing this isn't exactly fringe, she's president of the APS. So if you won't believe me, possibly her points might make some sense (including showing how for instance "reciprocity scales" often measure things that have nothing to do with reciprocity).

Daniel,

You write eloquently and effectively, and for some with ASD who have a certain naivety, your persuasiveness might lead them to question themselves, question a professional diagnosis, or question others who are just trying to figure out their own uniqueness. I only wanted to indicate that the words we use sometimes have a meaning and power beyond what we realize. I hope that what I have written did not offend, that was not my intention.

Z

HECK, that IS the main symptom of ASD, and is true of ALL autism.

I, for one, will readily agree I have LOTS of problems socially. Some NOW may doubt that during the day, but a lot IS artificial. Then again, I have a FINE line of comfort regarding others behaviour.

If they are TOO bad, I am uncomfortable because they are trouble makers. If they are TOO good, I am uncomfortable because they are looking to hurt me. WHY do I feel that way? EXPERIENCE! You see, THEY are artificial also. In that way, I am more real than they are. I don't try to hurt people unless they try to hurt me or someone else.

Well... actually, the differences in cognition and perception that autistic people exhibit (and that lead to our half of the social problems we get into) don't disappear when we're not in social situations, so I doubt it's really a particularly central autistic trait. It is, however, the main trait that professionals tend to notice about us.

I have no problem saying I can't do social interaction in a typical manner, I have a problem saying that I can't do it in a real manner, or that autistic people who do manage to pass are somehow non-autistic.

And like another poster said... I remember when I first was getting used to the idea of being autistic. Hearing someone state these things with that much certainty would have convinced me I wasn't autistic, because I have real two-way social interactions (I now know that most autistic people, in fact, do, but if it were presented like that it would have really caused me to question myself a good deal).

anbuend, thanks for that article, and it still points to the fact that people with ASDs aren't typical compared to normal people (who are the majority), and allowances need to be made by the majority (it kinda proves that those with ASDs lack social reciprocity as normal people have to do far more than what they do with others). I will use myself here, I've never partaken in genuine reciprocal interaction as it's defined by the dictionary term as it's written in the article (I have here, just not out there). I noted an error however, as the DSM-IV-TR does give examples of a lack of reciprocal interaction; the article states that it doesn't, but it does.

Whether interaction is [socially] real or not will depend on how one views the nature of autism, i.e., if autism is damage to certain parts of the brain that control the areas affected that manifest overtly (social interaction being one of the two key areas), and the extent of the damage equates to its severity; a breakdown in communication in areas of the brain, or other physical differences that are seen as "damage" by the majority, then my lacking in an arm analogy holds true. For example, it won't be standard/normal/genuine/real social interaction [to the majority] as said part that controls such will be damaged, and one will have to adapt via utilizing other non-damaged portions of the brain if they can, and however they interact, it'll always be impaired.

Again, just because one is lacking something, this doesn't make them any less of a human, just disabled or impaired in the way that their disability/impairment defines [to the majority].

Depending on how one wishes to phrase it, my social interaction is atypical, non-standard, mechanical, unreal, etcetera, and all equate to the same thing. This holds true to the DSM-IV-TR; whether it'll hold true to the DSM-V is yet to be determined, and if I don't fit the criteria outlined in such then, I'll acquire a new label [or none at all].

They call it a SPECTRUM for a reason. No cookie cutter exists for any ASD, including Asperger's.

double post. sorry

I agree with that. Some of the first books I grabbed when I first suspected I has AS described the criteria in such absolute terms that I rejected my suspicion for close to a year before doing any more research again.

Cannot engage in two-way interactions? Unable to read facial expressions? Will not make eye contact? Lacks empathy?? That's not me. I have trouble in every one of those areas, but I must not have AS unless I'm completely disabled in those areas, right? That's what I thought then, so instead of trying to learn more about it, I assumed it didn't apply to me even though it was the closest I ever came to understanding myself.

Pithlet,

Two-way: non-existent to impaired
Nonverbal cues: non-existent to impaired
Eye-contact: non-existent to impaired
Lack of empathy: non-existent to impaired
etcetera

The spectrum goes from completely lacking, or appearing to lack these things, to an impairment in such.

Even when one is "only" on the impaired end in the minimum, it all adds up to a disorder/disability.

People who purvey that one must lack eye contact are just as in error as those who say eye contact can be there without impairment.

Can we discuss this under a new topic instead of Alex not having Asperger Syndrome based upon biased point?

Seriously... 1s pages. We score over 5,000 page views on this and it doesn't do anything good in Wrong Planet.

Start a clean topic... please.

To me, it looks like it does WP good as its members can hold a reasonable conversation no matter how fallacious the original argument was, and thread title is.

We can't?

According to Professor Attwood [as well as many others], we can't (here's another from the aforementioned professor):



Don't mistake interacting with others as social reciprocation, and if I'm to presume, I'm presuming Mw99 misunderstood what this entails [as well as many others in this thread].

And here's another by Lorna Wing [which is taken from Asperger]: