TYPES of ASD individuals from a professional source

Post Reply New Topic

Well... kind of. The other issue is that this particular set of categories doesn't really even address school to adulthood as clearly as it could, if it were to focus on precise abilities in each area rather than having a blanket "level" covering all abilities. I'm trying to type up something that actually does that, from a book I have on behavioral concerns of all things. Also imperfect but much better at saying what abilities are being described than this one is.

Okay so based on the exercise that you did where you bolded the things that pertained to you per each group you fit in the CSC. The idea is that you take the one that MOST closely fits you and since you had more bold in that group that is how it would be classed. At least that is how I read it.

Also keep in mind that this isn't about typing autisitc people overall but very specifically addresses social issues for social training. I think that is an important consideration.

Last edited by kfisherx on 21 Mar 2011, 11:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

I wonder if there is an experiential difference between us. When I was in grade school NONE of the categories or questions in this article even existed, so as I read this I continually see things that had they been asked, I would have adapted much better to the social world. My memories are that NOTHING was addressed or even asked about my peculiarities and I just drifted through. Virtually ANYTHING would have been better, including this categorization.

But your experience as been at the other end, fully engaged in "the system" from an early age, so you are able to identify deficiencies from first hand knowledge.

I was more in "the system" from the age of 13 onward, although I was in counseling and the like from the age of 7 pretty continuously until then. But my mainstreaming experience was horrific in its own way, so I totally understand that -- I was pushed to excel until I finally cracked and got diagnosed. I was pushed harder than the regular students, despite having these enormous gaps in my knowledge that rendered even grade-level things incredibly difficult. I somehow managed until I was in middle school, then things started falling apart, but they thought that meant I was just "bored", and pushed me harder until I ended up in college, and that's where I just completely imploded. I wasn't ready for that at 18 let alone 14. But until then, every time my academics started to fall apart, they assumed I was bored and just kept skipping me grades. I had to drop out of high school because it was too hard for me, but the next year they put me in college anyway. It was hell on earth. I attempted suicide and got diagnosed pretty much the moment a psychiatrist laid eyes on me, and he was pretty astounded I hadn't been diagnosed earlier. Literally the first thing he told my mother was that I was probably some kind of autistic person with savant skills that led people to assume I had capacities that weren't there. He spent years trying to work with me on really basic understanding of language, because he was one of the few people who grasped I was using echolalia to BS my way through language as if I understood it when I didn't. He spent years just telling me stories every week we saw each other, about how different autistic or other disabled people finally got clued in as to what language was for. It didn't help, but he really gave it his best effort. (There were a bunch of misdiagnoses later on too, but that story is way too complicated for me to tell now.)

So I think I experienced both the hell of mainstreaming (in a worse form than usual because my initial hyperlexia-induced test scores fooled people into thinking I had good general skills and my pattern-matching let me pass as understanding things I had no comprehension of) and the hell of the system, for about equal amounts of time. (Well I guess I'm still in the system, so I've been in the system much longer than I was mainstreamed by now. But I mean mostly in childhood here. And the system I'm in now is way better than the system I was in as a kid.)

Anyway, for those interested, I transcribed and posted the rating/category system that I like the most out of the professionally-derived ones. Like the one here, it isn't yet studied (and may not be meant to be), but is just meant for people to be able to easily look at the skills and difficulties of an autistic person in the areas that most of us have difficulty. It doesn't give an overall rating, but you can give yourself one if you really want to by averaging the scores you get in each area. I've modified it a bit, in that I think it works better if you can give yourself decimals and not just whole numbers, and also if you can give yourself a range (if you have a range of functioning rather than a single level of functioning in any given area) instead of just a single number in each area. But otherwise I mostly left it alone and did it as directed:

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp3476046.html

This:

and this:



... sort of worries me. I keep trying to figure out how I "manage" in social contexts and it seems like most of what I do is a sort of verbal fencing. Sort of parry, parry, thrust - SCORE. No real attempt to communicate an inner state, just a pushing away of the conversation to keep it at arms length. If you asked me to describe whats really going on in my head "I got nuthin". Not like there's nothing in there but there's nothing I can actually say. Or at least what I have to say is very difficult to access and verbalize.


When you say pattern matching, it makes me think of almost a conditioned response. I've learned a great deal of "talking points" that keep me moving in a conversation, but aren't really me conversing as much as me regurgitating what I've rehearsed for 53 years. The bell chimes, the dog drools.

This worries me because I sometimes think I am very high functioning, but then I run up against things that suggest I am completely oblivious to some important information about the world around me, that my outward appearance of verbal acuity is nothing but a sham, an intricately constructed shield that serves no purpose than to keep the world out.

I am a mixture of Socially Anxious Social Communicator (SASC) and Weak Interactive Social Communicator (WISC).

Seconded.

I have to say the parts about reality and fiction in the CSC part really surprised me.

Some of the things that were used to peg me as "delusional" as a teenager were exactly in that category. I really believed that things I read or stories I heard either were true or could be true, and so I acted as if they were true.

I also had something go on where I think adolescence was the time at which I went through a phase that normally toddlers go through, where they begin doing make-believe, to such an extent that others can't tell if the person believes in the make-believe or not. I had virtually no make-believe until adolescence and then suddenly it all happened then. That didn't help my case either.

So many of the issues that were so badly misunderstood during adolescence boiled down to either:

* Finally going through stages that normally people go through in infancy or toddler years
* Lacking knowledge that most people either seem to be born with, or acquire by the age of 3 or so

It's why I often feel that what I have experienced in life is like... I was living with some really extreme levels of autism-related difficulties, and yet people weren't expecting that in me because I had either a few abilities or the appearance of a few abilities that caused them to not look any further. Even when I was doing things that were incredibly stereotypical (or even truly typical, based on the reading I'm doing about autism elsewhere) of autistic people. It's like people had a mental "slot" they put me into, and then they refused to see what was right in front of them. (Tellingly, though, people who did not know of or hear of those particular skills I was said to have, often asked my parents what was wrong with me, or called me "ret*d", or other things like that.)

And in doing my reading, I'm finding it... really odd. Because the books will say... you know, what's typical of autistic people in general, and a most of that stuff will apply to me. But then, the stuff under "severe autism" nearly always applies to me as well (except for a small number of things). Even when it's singled out specifically as for "that kind of" autistic person only, and not something that other kinds of autistic people supposedly have to worry about. It makes me feel really weird. It's not that I buy into the mild/moderate/severe autism classifications. But at the same time, I think it does say something about the fact that I have had these incredibly severe specific issues related to autism, such that even most people on boards like this one don't experience them, and then it's like I have these one or two skills (or even simply the appearance of a skill) that made those things invisible to other people (at least people who knew I had those skills -- people who didn't were often very accurate in pegging what areas of difficulty I had). But the more I learn, the more I'm shocked at the extremeness of the things that people overlooked.

As I was posting in another thread, I had these huge huge huge gaps in my understanding of the world. Gaps that I normally only hear of in these "hello, this is severe autism" descriptions, or similar things, if I hear of them at all. In many cases, gaps in "stuff people are practically born knowing". I really wish that I had the words to describe some of them, because the more I notice in them the more I sometimes gape in what opportunities I was given, what I was able to do, despite these gaps. I've only really met a few other people who had similar gaps to mine. I suspect I still have many of these gaps. But somehow I've succeeded in building pathways that somehow work around those gaps, pathways that most people with these gaps probably haven't been able to build. It sometimes makes me very surprised I've worked out certain skills at all, regardless of how late (or occasionally early) I may have worked them out. I don't think I appreciated how unusual this was until I've started reading more about this, and then filtering this through my knowledge of other autistic people (which is pretty extensive). I mean it's not that I believe everything that I read, but some things I've done do seem a lot more unusual than I'd assumed they were.

And this thing somehow got me thinking about that again.

On edit, perhaps a mix of WISC and RSC.

I went through this until, er... I think I was a sophomore in high school when it was clear that the fiction I was reading could not be true, which was a big disappointment to me.

This was a dawning realization over a few years, though. I'm not sure when the process started, but I do recall the sense of disappointment realizing that fictional characters did not in fact exist.

I don't have the file open, but I think there were a few other CSC things that I was like "Wait, that's me..." as well.

Pure WISC on my part. It is not even funny. I didn't think something can describe me so throughly.

EDIT: Reading this more I realize I was probably borderline ESC/WISC, but now fall more into the WISC category. As I developed in adulthood, which was slow...the more WISC I became.

These are very good guidelines.

To join in with CosmicRuss:

5. Neurotypical
4. Nuance Challenged Social Communicator
(NCSC)
b. Socially Anxious Social Communicator (SASC) Amazing. On the first read it fit in every way. I was at the wisc stage early on in school, and developed or grew into this "other" later in time. For the most part I do not experience this "anxiety phenomenon" at this stage in my life.

Helpful Kf.

It is clear to me that the women (I think it is all women) who created this have combined decades of work experience with ASD individuals. This is the most comprehsive one I have seen yet.

Recently I have been thinking about the two sub-categories of ESC, the "solid" and the "weak". Which one suits me better? At first I thought I should be "solid", bc I have a relatively successful life, take out the relationships with the oder gender. The more I think, the more I doubt it. I miss the point when I think "success" means "less autistic". I have to adjust my view a little toward to believe I had indeed very much help in my life from my parents (though they are a little aspoids themselves), from a group-mate in the uni, the WISC person I described before, and virtually continuously in my adulthood from my best friend (who is eccentric, but I think he only has some AS traits at most), and possibly others.

The key is communication. I am very poor about that. Narratives are hard to me. When I write even in my native Hungarian language, it consumes a lot of time and effort to come up with something comprehendable (at least to myself). Despite being meticulous about it, I prone to provoke misunderstanding. I can analyze even the lengthy and strange English texts (e.g.anbuend's, sorry, or this paper), but can not communicate via phone in English. In Hungarian, it is also an issue, but I learned to cope with it. During official phone calls I tend to close my eyes, turn my head down, and smear my temple, eyebrow or eyes, while concentrating on the conversation. I have to gather information before the phone calls so to have something at my hands to communicate. Otherwise thoughts, facts slip out of my mind.

Can somebody answer my question?

A feature of ESC is "Usually desire social interaction but struggle to relate to peers of their own age without facilitation. Seek out
interactions with adults."
I did not seek for "interactions" with adults. I did "interact" (or rather "listen") to adult relatives or my own father when they monologized a topic I was interested in. What does it mean in the context of my question of "solid" or "weak" ESC am I?

Last edited by OJani on 22 Mar 2011, 8:05 am, edited 1 time in total.

The key word is "usually". These scale are guidelines, not absolute measures. All it mean is that this particular trait isn't very strong or isn't even present in you. I could fit WISC and even have a few CSC traits, but the best fit for me is ESC.

Thank you for your reply. I think I have little in common with WISC and CSC but I feel some resonance, too. I suspect the answer to my Q is that I'm more on the "weak" side bc I avoided conversations with adults, too, while my mentioned WISC friend avoided communications with his peers, and sought interactions with adults. When I interacted with my peers, it was either in a childish manner or in connection with my unusual interests. I did it according to the book, namely, they also stood out the hierarchy of other peers for a reason and always no more than 1 or 2. Sometimes I got help from my sister to gather "interest" in other peers. I needed interest, which is also in the book.