Preliminary draft DSM-5 released

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Amanda Baggs has written a deeply perceptive analysis of the proposed changes to the DSM for autistic disorder: http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=601 .

I wonder how you guys would feel if they had taken the opposite action and put autism under Asperger. "Autism" is a bit of a misnomer, because the word was formed by cursory observation that the afflicted child was more concerned with himself rather than others. But in my opinion, that is a false way of looking at it. I think Asperger was more accurate in noting that the person actually lacks certain social skills that prevents him from understanding others.

I would think that Asperger is the actual condition and autism is really a special case thereof.

I find it helps people understand it better when I explain what autism actually is, and how I'm on the spectrum even though they're all certain that I'm Einstein's reincarnation.

Naturally I'm going to play up the strong sides, in part because I wasn't as aware of the weaknesses I possessed (or more accurately, assumed they were more broadly shared, and people had simply learned how to deal with this stuff better yet didn't tell me how), and in part because I like being known as the guy to ask about science or math questions.

Don't Aspies already state that they're at least mildly autistic?

Isn't claiming a mild diagnosis of Asperger's, which itself is a milder form of autism, a little redundant and silly? Now you could just state you show signs similar to those of AS, and if you actually register on the spectrum explain that appropriately or not.

Doesn't this seem like an ideal way to distinguish the stereotypical "I wanna be a unique butterfly but I'm akward so I'll say I'm an aspie" online from those who actually suffer the impairments required to be diagnosed properly?


It doesn't bother me, if HFA is the category that I can point to in a book and say "that's what I have", then so be it. Right now it's AS... what's the problem?

I'm not sure that's the case. Autistic IQs are notoriously hard to measure; so it's not even very easy to figure out which people are autistic and developmentally delayed in the first place. And then you have the chicken and egg question, of course: Are they developmentally delayed because they're very autistic? Or are they very autistic because they're developmentally delayed? It's not like they have two different brains, one for each diagnosis! Autistic people are developmentally delayed at a much, much higher rate than the general population, so there has to be some sort of connection.

I do not know about this purity point thing, and frankly do not see the point of it.

Asperger Syndrome has never not been an Autism. Autism is a descriptive word, Apserger is just a name. Asperger himself decided that Autism was an appropriate description of what he observed. If Kanner had used a different name in his published reporting,, then Lorna Wing would probably have called Aspergers Syndrome "Autism" or "Autistic Pathology" when she wrote her thesis.

There's a direct link between the severity of autistic symptoms and IQ level; they've known this for a long time, and it hasn't changed either. The lower the overall IQ, the greater the ASD symptoms (for the most part anyway).

Hey, "direct link" refers to a correlation--it doesn't say anything about which causes which. Daniel's right; there's a link. Which way the link goes, no one knows. For that matter, why does it have to go either way? It could just be that both things are caused by whatever genetic factors create the whole autistic phenomenon.

Autistic people are more likely to be developmentally delayed. Developmentally delayed people are more likely to be autistic.

Sure. Grab a bunch of people on the autism spectrum. Measure how old they are when they learn things--walking, putting on your clothes, cleaning your room, adding up some numbers, writing a story, etc. Compare them to a similar group of people who aren't on the autism spectrum. When someone is far enough behind average in multiple areas to cause problems, then that's developmental delay. (If it's just in a small number of areas, then it's a specific learning disability.) There are more people with developmental delays in the autistic group than the non-autistic group.

There is also a lower average IQ in the autistic group, but IQs don't really mean much when it comes to describing autistic people because it's extremely hard to measure IQs properly, and the IQs don't mean very much because of the big scatter in skills that's common on the spectrum. IQ is considered a criterion for developmental delay, though, so I have to mention it.

Autistic development isn't just a matter of higher rates of developmental delay; it's not that simple. The best way to define autistic development is more like "highly unusual" than "delayed". You will find, along with the developmental delays, and often in the same people who have the developmental delays, unusually high skill levels in specialized areas. When these specialized areas are in academics, you often see "giftedness" and a high score on IQ tests. Autistic development is often very uneven from one area to another--behind in one area, ahead in another is practically routine. So you can't really predict much based on developmental delays, especially in little kids.