What form of Autism is most common?

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I checked incidence of autism, and the best sources I've found say PDD-NOS is the most common. That says something about how messed up the diagnosis system is when the NOS catch-all category is the most common...

Also found this study that followed kids with PDD-NOS and Kanner's diagnoses and speech delays from age 2 to age 9. 88% were speaking by age 9. Speech is one way people might say you were high-functioning.

The common statistic that 70% of Kanner's autistics are mentally ret*d could be way off base (this isn't counting PDDNOS and Asperger's, apparently). IQ tests depend on communication. Most speech delayed people can think a whole lot more than they can say. Lots of autistics don't even get the chance to try alternative communication, let alone be taught literacy, because it's assumed "If you can't speak, it's because you don't have the cognitive ability to speak; and if you can't speak, you definitely can't learn to read". They made that mistake with cerebral palsy and learned better. Lots of severely disabled people with CP can speak just fine if somebody shows them how to use some kind of communication device. I bet we're going to learn that the same thing is true with autism--that the "communication disorder" part of it can be quite disconnected from the cognitive aspects; that even if you do score low on an IQ test, doesn't mean you can't be shown how to communicate. Literacy mightn't be possible for some; letters are quite abstract; but there's always pictures and symbols and gestures. They really underestimate autistic people that way.

The majority of people with Autism where I live have the classic autism with various forms of mental retardation. The high functioning autistic people that I have encountered, rather in school or in my program, have mild mental retardation. I am the only person with Asperger's that I know and I do not have any learning problems, so here in my area Asperger's is very uncommon.