may pdd-nos be seen as nearly a form or a mild form of asper

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i understand that pdd-nos can mean a lot of things. however if someone seems to show a lot of the traits of an aspie, especially lack of empathy, lack of eye contact, social anxiety, lack of emotion, fidgeting, pedantic speech..but isn't exactly there, would pdd-nos be the appropriate label? or mild as? or high functioning autism? i'm pretty sure the sub categories are going to be subsumed by ASD, but i'm still curious what they would be.

It sounds to me like a person meeting those criteria would have PDD-NOS, seeing as how they don't totally meet the criteria for anything else.

It is my understanding that PDD-NOS is a form of autism and it may vary in severity...depending on the set of symptoms.
I was assessed as having Asperger's by an AS specialist, while I had another psych mark PDD-NOS down on my chart.

A tad confusing...they are definitely related...

i have pdd-nos and it is usually more severe than aspergers.

pdd-nos is a vague label because all it means is that either you do not have all the symptoms of asd or that you have h.f.a. but not impaired enough to be diagnosed as such.

another difference between pdd-nos and h.f.a. or a.s. is that a condition such as autism is usually stable over time, while someone with pdd usually is not diagnosed as autistic because they show many signs of improvement.

there is also more comorbidity in pdd-nos, especially with sensory issues and mental illnesses

i do not feel as though i really have anything in common with the asd community except for the fact that i have social impairments. in fact, i have so many problems that are not associated with asd that i wonder if i was not misdiagnosed.

is it possible to have social and communication deficits without having asd?

I have social and communication deficits, sensory issues, executive dysfunction, rather narrow interests arguably...I stim, have an odd voice, an odd gait, lack of eye contact, um....mild face blindness and CAPD.....I had trouble with normal self-care when I was younger...and for some reason, this is said not to be an issue with AS...according to the DSM-V.....I still have to force it....um....yaar....Also, though I have certain routines, they do not rule my entire life...only certain aspects...like social interactions...I need to be formally initiated with people before I can comfortable interact with them...it has to happen according to a certain protocol or it won't happen at all...and um...howyousay...I go gout with my folks every week...can't start my work before a certain time..even if I try...can get very thrown off by unexpected outings/events/changes....etc..

losing train of thought...

The psych who wrote PDD-NOS on my chart admittedly didn't know very much about the autistic spectrum..just enough to agree that I was likely someplace on it..and he also said that my AS assessment didn't really count as an official diagnosis...he just agreed that I appear to have some autistic traits..
I have improved a lot since I was a child, just as I seemed to be more "functional" before I entered public school...Though I was an outsider from the other kids and I had a very limited understanding of boundaries and social ques..

I don't think that a person can have PDD-NOS and not be on the autistic spectrum...but social deficits could arguably be caused by different things.


I think that maybe (provided what I have is actually PDD-NOS and not the AS the AS lady said I had)....It can be more severe in some ways and less in others. I have managed to have a decent time at winding up in romantic relationships that tend to last...I have considerably more difficulty with casual friendships.

Many folk with Asperger's can drive...and I can't..not for lack of trying...The AS adults I have met seem more like adults, whereas I am perpetually childlike....in the meet ups...I have seemed like I was someplace in-between the AS folk and the HFA folk...but no person is typical....and even if I were NT, most likely I'd be on the non-conformist side of things......hard to say

PDD-NOS has no set definition.

It is simply autism that does not fit into the set categories. Another name for it is "atypical autism".

PDD-NOS varies in severity from extreme (some cases are diagnosed as PDD-NOS because the person's skills cannot be evaluated due to their profound disability) to very mild (cases where only one or two traits are present and barely strong enough to cause problems). In between, there are cases with combinations of traits and/or history that don't fit the established definitions, as well as cases complicated by other conditions which make diagnosis more difficult and ambiguous.

The only common factor between PDD-NOS cases is that they do not fit into the typical classifications.

PDD-NOS is the most common autism spectrum diagnosis. It represents 65% of the Spectrum.

Regarding the relationship of PDD-NOS and Asperger's:
*Someone who has Asperger's traits without impairment does not warrant any kind of diagnosis. If you are talking about "not quite there" in these terms, then this would be classed as "broader autism phenotype" and would not be an official diagnosis of any sort.

*If you mean "not quite there" in terms of number of traits, rather than presence or absence of impairment, then someone who has traits that are too few for Asperger's, which do not qualify for any other diagnosis, but which do cause impairment, would be diagnosed PDD-NOS.

*Someone whose traits are identical to Asperger's, but who has a history of speech delay or developmental delay, is also diagnosed PDD-NOS. These are generally people originally diagnosed with classical autism.

My nephew would have been diagnosed with this; speech delay + typical AS presentation, but they threw that out the window and just gave him ASD, as they saw that's how it's going.

I'd guess that most cases of PDD-NOS are actually "mild" AS/ASD, which is where the common view comes from that PDD-NOS is often seen as mild.

Another possibility is people in the US who were diagnosed before aspergers became a category in the DSM an the late 80s. I was diagnosed PDD-NOS as a child back in the 80s but I recently got a diagnoses of "mild" aspergers as well.

Google "broader autism phenotype"--you should get some articles.

Basically, autism as a whole fades into the typical gradually; it's not a distinct entity on its own. The diagnostic cutoff is fairly arbitrary, determined at the point where significant impairment is present.

However, plenty of people without diagnosable autism have autistic traits. That's probably because autism is created when a lot of different traits come together, when multiple genes interact in just the right way; but it's possible to have just some of the same traits (and the same genetics) that normally make up autism.

So, maybe an autistic person might have (arbitrary number) fifty of those genes.
A BAP individual might have twenty.
A typical individual, maybe five.

Autism's part of the spectrum of human diversity. Autistic traits are present in the general population. There are a lot of people who are so close to autism that the only reason that they aren't diagnosable is that they're coping rather well--but, more often than not, they can see eye to eye with people who've got full-blown autism, and are often active members of autistic culture. Sharing a lot of the same traits, they may have more in common with the average autistic than with the average neurotypical--the presence or absence of disability doesn't necessarily dictate which people have more or less in common.

No it's not. It's meeting the criteria for AS except having a speech delay, and then not meeting enough criteria for autism.