Attempting to prove neurotypicality

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I've read several times that the best way to prove one has AS is to fail at proving that one is a NT. After carefully observing my behavior in the past few weeks, in this thread, I am going to attempt to do this.

So, the DSM-IV criteria for Asperger's Disorder (source) consists of the following:

Now, let's see here. For part 1, up until the age of 14, I was able to make eye contact without any effort. So obviously, my discomfort with eye contact must be a learned behavior, and therefore does not count (*cough* ). Facial expressions is a bit trickier. I almost always have a "flat" effect, displaying no emotion at all, but, apparently, my social smiling is exaggerated. I have absolutely no ability whatsoever to control this (if I could, my life would be much easier), so this is definitely a symptom of AS that I truly have. According to the internet, my ability to read facial expressions is even below that for most aspies. While online tests aren't always accurate, it's safe to say that I find it to be difficult enough to put a check in this box. I've been told I have odd postures before, and whenever I look into the mirror I can see it for myself too. So, for part one, it's safe to say that, yes, I am impaired in this area. So far, it's +1/2 for section A.

Now, let's move on to part two: a failure to develop peer relationships. In elementary school, I had friends. I managed to develop relationships with them, although there weren't that many. The reason why I have not made any friends since then must be because of social anxiety (once again, ). Logically, I want to check this box and add another point, but, since I'm trying to do this from a neurotypically biased standpoint, I will not, as it can be controversial. So I'm still at 1/2.

Part 3: a lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment, interests, or achievements with other people. I rarely ever do anything 'spontaneously.' My mom complains that if she does not ever ask me questions then I would never tell her anything. I trust her judgement on this, and I think she is right. I never just walk up to someone and share a bit of information. I possess this trait so strongly, I'm temped to add more than one point for it. But since I'm trying to prove my neurotypicality, I'm not going to do that. I have two of them now, but I'm still going to go over the fourth criterion anyway.

Now, for the last one. Well, this one's a bit iffy. Considering the fact that it is totally contextual, there are some times when I do respond accurately in social and emotional situations. Since I can do it right sometimes, I must be NT, right (:roll:)? I already have a 2/2 score, so it doesn't really matter anyway.

Alright, now it's time to move on to the next part.



So, I'm going to prove that I don't have any of this stuff. I think I just crapped a brick, because it's not going to happen. I'm about ready to give up right now. But anyway, here we go with part 1. When I was 8 years old, I spent 90% of my life thinking about racing. I played video games like NASCAR and Gran Turismo on my PS1 for half the day, I had a collection of several hundred die-cast race cars that I played with for hours on end. Whenever I was walking or riding a bike I would make car engine noises and pretend I was racing. In school I would take erasers, draw on them, and drive them around in circles on my desk. And this was just one of my obsessions. It wasn't until just a few years ago when I started to open up my mind and think about other things. Right now, my life is just about the same way, but with AS. It's really hard for me not to think about it at least once every 10 minutes.

I'm not even going to bother with 2, 3, and 4, because I possess criteria for 1 so strongly. It's not worth my time.



Well, I guess it's arguable that my impairment in social interaction is due to social anxiety, and not necessarily AS. Since my AS does not really affect my other areas of functioning (I generally do well in school, and I am not anywhere near impaired by my executive dysfunction), this is where I can be proved a NT. Although, anyone with half a brain should be able to realize that my social anxiety is entirely due to my social impairments listed in section 1A. Depending upon the angle you look at it, this one could really go either way. It's extremely subjective.



Check. Why can't the rest of the diagnostic criteria be as black and white as this one?



If anything, my mental development, with the exception of social development, has always exceeded expectations.



I know I do not have Schizophrenia. I'm not sure about another pervasive developmental disorder (isn't that supposed to be autism anyway?), but I don't even give a crap anymore. I'm getting tired of doing this.

TL:DR - Unless I significantly skew the results, it is nearly impossible to prove my neurotypicality. Therefore, I must be an aspie. Although my primary reason for creating this thread was just to get it off of my mind, I am curious to see other people's attempts to diagnose themselves. Also, if I made any mistakes in my interpretations, please let me know.

I think it would be a little strange to suggest a person is neurotypical, if they miss the criteria for a diagnosis by one trait. People take quizes to scan for aspergers that score almost in the aspergers range but not quite. Basically some people are more introverted and some people are more extroverted and some people fall in between these two areas.

Extreme introverted behavior can result in many of the traits of Aspergers and Extreme extroverted behavior can give someone a very high score as a Neurotypical individual.

So are we measuring our hardwired neurological abilities, by diagnositic tests. All or nothing, where if someone is not all Aspergers they are all Neurotypical. There is nothing cut or dry about it. Maybe a person might fit all the criteria, except one part; that doesn't necessarily mean they are neurologically that different from the person that met that one part.

And then there are those that may have all the symptoms except they don't consider any of it an impairment in their life. Does that really make them neurologically different, or is it just a difference of opinion, a product of whether or not they are fortunate in their life circumstances.

People that are introverts sometimes display extroverted behavior and people that are extroverts sometimes display introverted behavior. Where did we ever get the idea that the more extroverted a person is the more neurotypical a person is? It's a range, extremely neurotypical is no longer typical it is atypical. The people that score somewhere in the middle of the bell curve are more typical than the ones on ends of the bell curve.

As to the question of actual neurological differences the person that is extremely extroverted could have a different neurological makeup than someone that is right in the middle of the bell curve with an equal distribution of extroverted and introverted traits.

My opinion is if a person is here on this website for support, don't worry if you may or may not meet one trait, it's a human spectrum and many of us share a mix of traits with others on either end of the spectrum. A person missing the repetitive behaviors part of the mix may still have all the social deficit issues and need support. A person that has all the symptoms but functions well in life, may need no support.

As far as an official diagnosis, only a trained professional can make it, and it's still not cut and dry. Opinion or what day of the week and how a person feels that day; patient or psychiatrist, can make an impact on the official diagnosis.

I think you did a very good job in your analysis of yourself. The more I look at the Asperger criteria the more I remember people in my life that had the traits on somedays and didn't have them on other days, depending on mood, circumstance, health, and a myriad of other factors. As far as I know, none of those people had a diagnosis, but I worked in area where I saw hundreds of the same people on a weekly basis; some weeks they were more asperger like and some weeks they were less asperger like.

The word I used in those days was shy or introverted. It was a Bowling Center, a place you expect to see mostly extroverts but there were many solo bowlers that were as obsessed with Bowling as any of the others. Some of these folks lived and breathed bowling as an interest. A special interest; definitely, one that some did for decades.

A recent study pointed to almost 30 percent of the population having at least one trait of Autism; there could of been more depending on the changing circumstances in a person's life from one day to the next.

I think the major issue, is whether or not someone is functioning okay in life, and whether or not they need support; that can be influenced by more factors than I can imagine. Those solo bowlers got the social support they needed from the more extroverted bowlers. I don't see the same opportunities in face to face interaction in society that we had 20 to 30 years ago. It's got to be harder for people than it used to be for actual face to face, human interaction.

Last edited by aghogday on 29 Jun 2011, 12:53 am, edited 1 time in total.

I'm going to try the autistic criteria. Because it's a bit harder to prove I'm autistic. I guess mostly I'm proving... well, not proving I'm not neurotypical, but I have nothing better to do.

1. My therapist outright told me she finds me very hard to read, and described me as having "muted affect," so I'm going with this one.

2. I know you went for an absolute here, where one could have no age-appropriate friends at all, I'll argue that while I did have a few peer relationships, they were typically not very strong and more than a few actually ended up hating and even bullying me. Most of the people I was able to interact with were adults. So I am going with this one as well.

3. I don't believe this one is applicable, although I do recall having an interest that practically demanded the participation of more people and doing everything I could to work out how to do it alone, before giving up and finding adults who had the same interest (gaming). Still, not going to count it because I did monologue at everyone.

4. Oh, let's see - my parents were constantly on me about failing to reciprocate simple pleasantries (I think I finally got "please" and "thank you" mostly down after working at McDonald's, where the use of both terms is heavily scripted. I am still kind of dodgy on "You're welcome"). My ex was constantly frustrated that I never asked "How was your day?" because I saw no point. I think the most egregious example of this is actually a friend recently attempted suicide, I knew an attempt was likely, and I didn't think to send her any e-mail before we knew for sure the attempt had happened, and then it took me two days after she was in the hospital and someone else told me she'd e-mailed her to realize I should have e-mailed her as soon as I heard she was hospitalized. I fail this in so many ways and remembering to do it is a constant, conscious, effort. I also prefer to spend as much time as possible alone, and have all my life.

Oh, and there's those times I was actually asked out on dates, did not know I was out on dates, and did not behave as if I were out on dates. Or never seeing and thus never responding to flirting.

So that's three points.



1. No. I started speaking single words during my first year and complete sentences at 11 months. I realize there are many who would say this should be disqualifying, but I wanted to go over these criteria in detail.

2. Very much so. I still have trouble with this. I can manage conversations relevant to my interests. Outside of that, I've been told I barely talk (and I have gone days at a time without speaking to anyone). Conversations in which we don't share a common interest tend to fall apart quickly and I tend to get confused/frustrated trying to figure out what I am supposed to say.

3. My mother described me doing this as a child (I would quote books I learned to read from at 2-onward), but I am not sure how much it qualifies. I am not really committed to this one, because I cannot relate enough complete memories to accurately describe it.

4. The imaginative play I had my mother describe to me was primarily reenacting a movie scene from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I found most games other children played to be pretty boring. I didn't tend to play with toys in so much an imaginative way, but rather, hmm, I liked having scenes? and such. Pretending that objects were other objects wasn't a big thing for me, and toys weren't things that could represent what they were designed to resemble. I'm uncertain about whether to take this one, though.

So, going with 1. Maybe 2.



1. My interests were my life. I wasn't just fascinated with games, but I was fixated on one specific game for years. I mean I had other games, too, because they resembled that game or were produced by the same publisher, but that game was the game and it was all I talked about for close to a decade. I had other interests - television shows, books, movies, etc. that were very intense and focused as well. I'd read the same books over and over again, dozens of times. I couldn't watch the same TV shows or movies over and over in the same way, but I tried to watch them as often as they were on. I remember at one point in the mid-80s there was a series on NBC that I really liked. I ended up watching NBC prime time every night just in the hopes of catching one of the previews. Do y'all think that qualifies?

2. I have these, but I do not think they qualify to the degree that might count as an impairment. They're mostly pretty mild.

3. Yes, so much. I still stim a lot. As a child I stimmed in so many ways, and while I don't still stim in all the same ways, I am not really able to stop myself from doing it for very long, and catch myself doing so in public rather frequently. The amount I do varies on a day to day basis, however, and some days I may not stim very much at all.

4. Not that I am aware of.

So that's six points right there.



(A) Not sure about this.

(B) Not sure. If it was anything like the way I've been for most of my life, it was likely the case.

(C) I wrote about symbolic/imaginative play above.

So one of these, maybe two.



No, it is not.

It's pretty hard for me to prove that I am neurotypical.

I want to note something from AS, however:



No delay in cognitive development that I am aware of. Definite delay in the development of age-appropriate self-help skills, and adaptive behavior. I am not sure about curiosity about the environment in childhood. On the one hand I preferred to spend all my time in my room. On the other hand, I would wander off to explore and get in trouble.



If I fit the criteria for autism, that should rule out AS. I do not meet the criteria for schizophrenia.

I guess the short version is - I meet the criteria for autism, and because of particular delays and meeting the criteria for autism, AS should be ruled out.

I suspect that wouldn't go very far in most diagnosticians' offices, though. But I already know I am not neurotypical.

This is a highly, highly interesting exercise. One that I think I could benefit from as well. If you don't mind, I'm going to bandwagon along and attempt to prove my own neurotypicality. I've been obsessively analyzing my behavior for the last couple of months, so it shouldn't be that hard to provide accurate answers.

Part One!

(1) - My mom swears up and down that I didn't have any problem with eye contact as a kid, and that the only time I did was when I was copying a friend at school, so even though the limited eye contact I make now feels forced and like I'm trying to prove to the other person that I actually am looking at them, this one is technically a no. My siblings like to laugh at the weird faces I make, but my mom complains that her boyfriend can never tell what I think of him, so therefor I must only be being intentionally rude to people I don't like by not showing my feelings around them. The only complaints I've ever been given about body posture is that I don't walk like a "lady," so therefore I must be a lesbian. (Technically true.) I test poorly in facial recognition tests, but so does my ADHD younger brother, so therefor this could easily be explained by undiagnosed ADHD.

(2) - I had at least one friend all throughout my public school years, so therefor this one must be false despite the fact that I can not relate to my peers currently and spend more time interacting with my 15 year-old sister's friends than with my own. I also think that at 20 years old, "peer relationships appropriate to developmental level" should include romantic relationships because it is unnatural to be 20 years old and never have had a romantic relationship. But this could be explained by the fact that I am a partially-closeted lesbian and that I don't "put myself out there" enough.

(3) - I have always forced my interests on others. I used to give away my favorite books to friends and talk non-stop about my favorite books. I occasionally show my parents when I do really well on something. So here's another false. (But on a side note, how do special interests work with this trait? Aren't AS kids known for forcing their special interests on others without care for the other party's interest? Seems somewhat contradictory to me.)

(4) - I think this is the only one I can say that I do actually without any doubt or room for interpretation have. Unless there is an obvious, scripted response that I am supposed to say (like "are you OK?"/"I'm sorry"/"That's horrible"), I really struggle for an appropriate response. If my sister comes crying to me in the middle of the night because her head hurts, I give her an ibuprofen and tell her to try and fall asleep. I tell her there's nothing more I can do to help her. If a friend tells me a sob-story, I never know what to say. The only response beyond the scripted ones I can think of is to try to relate their experience to one of my own to show them that I understand and feel bad for them. This, of course, comes off as me being self-centered. I can't give personalized gifts. I hate gift-giving. I even hate receiving gifts because it means I have to give one back. I can't convince myself that someone could like something I wouldn't.

Part One Summary: 1 out of 2! I'm Neurotypical!! !

Part Two!



(1) - I have interests, but they aren't necessarily Aspie-level obsessive. If you asked me now, I could tell you things I was really interested in, but nothing that was my "special interest." Also, my grandmother is well known for her intense interests. She's taken up piano, sewing, painting, writing, gardening, and so on and so forth at different periods of time with a startling intensity only to drop the project and move on to something else. She's NT, so therefor I must be NT.

(2) - I couldn't tell you any that stood out as nonfunctional or abnormal. I like to have things a certain way and do things the same way, but so does my mother and she just has anxiety and OCD problems. The only really weird one I have is I flap my arms going down the second flight of stairs to my house, but I don't do it EVERY time I go down the stairs. If I'm carrying something, it won't bother me to not do the flappy stimmy thing. I don't have to go back up the stairs and back down again to fulfill the ritual.

(3) - I do the good, old classic: hand-flapping. I also do this shaky thing when I'm trying to control my big stims. I also jump up and down, rub my face, bounce on my heels or toes, spell "fingers" over and over, wiggle my fingers, wring my hands and feet, and this sort of high-pitched laugh/squeak thing. I can't 100% trace my stimming back to childhood. My parents barely notice now, so I doubt they would have when I was cute and tiny. But I think it's safe to say I've stimmed all my life. HOWEVER, it's been noted that 10% of neurotypical children stim (no figures for adults, mind you), so the presence of stimming could just be because I'm a hyperactive freak.

(4) - My ADHD brother is a much better example of this than I am, so another negative here.

Part Two Summary: 1 out of 1! Aspie!! !

Part Three!



I agree that this is extremely subjective. In the eyes of my mother, I am very socially impaired. I made up fake friends last year to get her to stop worrying about me. She still tries to set me up with guys, despite my disinterest. (Disinterest, it should be noted, that is due to more than me being a lesbian. I don't want a girlfriend that much either.) According to my dad, I'm just "too smart" to let "all that silly stuff" get in the way of my schooling. The few troubles I have in school (like forgetting to turn in a major project last semester because of an unexpected obsession with a certain Dolly Montenegro...[Note: Not a real person. A character in a book I was writing.]) could be due to undiagnosed ADHD, because my brother had lots of homework troubles this past year. And obviously I'm just too shy like everyone's told me all my life and I need to just "try harder" and "put myself out there more."

Part Three Summary: Neurotypical!! !

Part Four!



Definitely. I could speak in sentences before I could walk, and was reading soon after. I scared people because I spoke so well yet was so tiny.

Part Four Summary: Aspie!! !

Part Five!



Agreed with SammichEater. I've always exceeded expectations.

Part Five Summary: Aspie!! !

Part Six!



I don't think I'm imagining all this... BUT MAYBE I AM!

Part Six Summary: What's reality again?

TL;DR: I think I just proved I am neurotypical. But that doesn't surprise me much. I already knew I wasn't obviously autistic, otherwise I would have been diagnosed as a kid. It actually surprised me that there were some on this list that I couldn't find a way to disagree with. I've been pro-conning these things like nobody's business. I thought I could play devil's advocate to all of them by now. The only thing that really bothers me about doing this is how much it reminds me of the NT people around me who have similar traits to me. Maybe I've got a family full of people with autistic traits. Or maybe I'm NT. Funny how there are no real answers, isn't it?

Also, I don't think you made any errors.

For the sake of completeness,

ICD-10 criteria for AS:

http://www.iancommunity.org/cs/about_as ... s_syndrome

Szatmari, Bremner, and Nagy:

http://www.asperger-advice.com/criteria ... et-al.html

Gillberg and Gillberg criteria for AS:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christophe ... r_syndrome

I feel like I'm missing one.

And I removed Tony Attwood's and Carol Gray's criteria as it was not the same as that included in the Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome.

Last edited by Verdandi on 29 Jun 2011, 1:33 am, edited 1 time in total.

I think that's what aghogday meant by his post. None of us are 100% autistic or NT, it's a spectrum, and there is a huge grey area. Although I think it is important to mention that people with ADHD aren't NT either.



So this is why they're changing it for the DSM-V. That hardly makes any sense at all. Supposedly one can't have AS if one has autism, but one can't have autism if one can't have AS. What?

How I understand the DSM-IV criteria:

PDD-NOS and autism both have precedence over Asperger's Syndrome. If you meet the criteria for either, you do not meet the criteria for AS.

I don't meet the criteria for AS per the DSM-IV because I had some delays in self-help and adaptive skills, and meet the criteria for either PDD-NOS or autism (I think the latter would be harder to achieve in a clinical setting, even if it is technically true). If you leave that part out I easily meet the criteria for AS.

This is kind of irrelevant, as a lot of people who meet the criteria for autism or PDD-NOS are diagnosed with AS, and many people diagnosed with AS have delays in self-help and adaptive skills, so it really comes down to how much history you can provide to whoever will diagnose you and what they ultimately decide, despite what the DSM-IV says.

I believe they're changing it for DSM-V for reasons described on the DSM-V website:

I was still typing when both aghogday and Verdandi posted. I'm a slow typer. XD You think so? I thought Neurotypical only made a distinction between autistic vs. non-autistic brains. But then ADHD technically is a developmental disorder, but it can also be classified as a behavioral disorder. And I do strongly believe that there is some neurological aspects to it because caffeine has an opposite affect on people with ADHD and ADD.

Aghogday, you are a deep thinker. I found your post super interesting.

@ Verdandi - Would you mind defining what a "delay in self-help skills" is? I've heard that term a couple of times, but I've never been able to find a good definition of it. You seem to have a pretty good grasp on the subject, though.

Nevermind. That was a misunderstanding on my part. I misread the criteria and thought that a diagnosis of both was required to have either one. I know what you mean now. Each category is mutually exclusive. Although I don't really think it matters a whole lot. It's all the same thing really.

If they were born that way, they are neurologically different. Maybe they don't need a diagnosis because they don't need support, but that is a political (=welfare related) difference, not a scientific one. I might have said it too many times but this mixed level of criteria is what really frustrates me with DSM.

ADHD is a developmental disorder and it is definitely neurological. It is not, however, behavioral (although I think many see it as such). Behavioral disorders are like:

http://www.bettermedicine.com/article/b ... -disorders



This description doesn't really fit ADHD, which is present from early childhood and doesn't actually involve aggression, defiance, disruption, and hostility as behavioral factors.

Although, to be fair, I think a lot of children who have ADHD also have behavioral disorders.



I did as well. I went to say something but got caught up in a pointless irrelevant detail.



From The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome which I admit I do not agree with on everything, but I think that his section on DSM-IV criteria is spot-on with regards to several points:





Yeah, I don't think it matters a lot, and it is all the same thing.

I did that for years until I ended up in my local mental health system with Depression.

I like the bell curve illustration, as there are clusters centered around the mean and a scatter from this center - like IQ's, where most people cluster in between 85 to 115 with a mean of 100 or so. I've heard that it is harder to tell one from another in this range, but when 'outside'-- there is a "jump" which they call 120+ the "superior range."
I was thinking of the Meyers briggs scale of introversion and extroversion with a "spectrum" of possibilities, but without an even distribution. I wonder what this distribution is?

I have a strong hunch that "Neurotypicality" is somewhere in a "mean" of something, otherwise there wouldn't be a "center" or something central, to gauge one subjective experience to another - we wouldn't/ couldn't be here having this conversation .
Thoughts?

That's exactly what I meant by that statement. Just because one individual functions well and one individual doesn't function well, while both of them have the same symptoms, doesn't mean they are significantly neurologically different from each other. One may find their life circumstances depressing and anxiety ridden, while the other may have a better life circumstance. I can see where my statement wasn't clear.

I had the same symptoms of Autism all my life, with a 4 year delay in language that was definitely biological in origin, and didn't seek or was provided a diagnosis until other health and environmental circumstances brought me to my knees, some 47 years later. I had the same neurological issues my whole life.

While I was an Athletic Director at a Military installation with 23 years of service, I was no more neurotypical than I was when I was born with the speech delay, I was fortunate enough to make the necessary adaptations that worked for me and be in the right place at the right time, to survive in life that long.

The idea that there are people with diagnoses of Autism/Aspergers/ADHD/Bi-Polar and what ever other diagnoses there are of neurological difference and everyone else is neurotypical has no scientific basis. There is no possible way of knowing for sure, who has neurological issues and who doesn't until they come up with a physical test that definitively proves it.

Until then, we have judgements on human beings that can force themselves to make eye contact when it does not come natural, mimick others almost perfectly to fit in, and smile in every appropriate circumstance, until they "act" too "good", and are considered to be too normal, and may be considered odd because they always "act" happy. We have absolutely no way of knowing how many people walk among us that have adapted this way, seem neurotypical, but as far as we may be nowhere close to neurotypical.

This is how I adapted, but in my mind, it was normal. As far as I knew everyone else had to mimick everyone else, and some didn't do as good a job of it as I did. I thought it was normal to have to consciously think when to smile, how to move, how to sit, how to stand, how to walk, how to talk, every waking minute of my day that I was around people, which was all the time for me except for when I was in my car, finally able to let some of it go. I had little idea that this came naturally to some people, without having to make the conscious effort.

What scares me the most about this neurotypical vs. Autistic talk, is a discussion in another forum where an individual talked about bringing down neurotypical society as a goal in life. If this goal was met the individual would be bringing down segments of society that he thinks are neurotypical, that may be much more atypical than he his. The individual was not suggesting violence, just finding ways to bring "NT" society down.

While Autism may be a difference, we live in a human spectrum full of difference. The people we sit to next on the bus, or drive past on the highway, may have no idea what the symptoms of Aspergers or Autism are, and be struggling their best to survive in life, and may be as neurologically atypical as any of us.

Regardless of what physical test that comes out that may improve on the subjective diagnostic criteria, there still will remain many people undiagnosed in society. The only thing we know for sure about any of our neighbors is they are neurodiverse regardless of whether or not they have a diagnosis of any kind.

After being involved in the other forum, I am convinced that the constant talk about Autistic vs. Neurotypical individuals, fueled on the internet by different groups, suggesting that Autistic people are normal and neurotypical people are not normal, is starting to become potential motivation for people to do more than provide satirical comments about "NT's" and potentially cause problems for innocent people trying to survive in society that may be as atypical as anyone else.

The problem here, is if people with Autism start doing this kind of thing and it is publicized in the mainstream media, not only are there going to be people that don't treat autistic people well because they don't understand the differences, they may also learn to fear Autistic people as well. This is one sure way of making life harder for all Autistic people.

I find it encouraging the response here of people that understand the subjectivity and the gray area that exists in this talk about neurotypical vs. Autistic. Hopefully one day all will understand it's just one big human spectrum, and we are all in it together, doing what we have to, to survive.

Unfortunately the people that are the most different, sometimes have it harder than others, but that's part of human nature and life, and not the fault of everyone else in society that is struggling to survive the best they can.

The way I survived in society was to learn how to support the needs of others; the more I supported others the more they forgot about any difference that I had, and the more I learned about interacting with people. It's wasn't an easy thing to do, but it's what it took to keep a job and survive.

This I can say for sure, though, and that was no one feared my differences, they were just noticed and at times ridiculed. One can receive respect for the good things they do in life, but the last thing one needs for success is fear from others.

Scientific research today is providing more and more evidence that the traits of Autism are spread wide in society, and not normally diagnosed. The Autistic community that supports the Autistic vs. NT, modality of thought seems to be scientifically oriented, so as more evidence comes out to suggest that the lines of NT vs. Autism are just illusion and not part of reality, we can do away with the concept of NT, and see a Human spectrum where some need more support to surive and some need less support to survive, depending on how successful they have been in adapting to life, with their unique biologcial conditions and/or disorders.

Official diagnoses will still be required for treatment, but at least we won't try to diagnose the rest of the population with one broad paintbrush of opinion.

This. Especially if someone has co-morbid diagnoses of both AS and ADHD.

Well before I knew I had autism, the extreme extroverts were the ones that stood out for me, and they were often the ones that I came into conflict with, because they did things that went against my sense of what was right and wrong (they didn't play by the rules). On the other hand they didn't understand my reserved nature either and my rigid way of thinking.

I have the feeling that these are the people that other autistic people have problems with as well. The ones referred to by Autistics as neurotypical, but in actuality they are a minority, close to that of extreme introverts, inclusive of Autistic people. The ones somewhere in the middle of the bell curve are actually "neurotypical" in that they have a balance of both extroversion and introversion. There may be somedays they are more like introverts and somedays where they are more like extroverts, but the balance they have is good and usually leads to a fairly good temperament, understanding both sides of coin better.

The people that lean strongly towards introversion, to me, are difficult to separate from someone that has Aspergers, unless they have physical issues like sensory problems.

It bothers my sense of logic when I hear people suggest that extroverts are neurotypical, research shows a great deal of biological difference in the way they respond to stimuli, I see this as anything but neurotypical. The actual neurotypical may be the ones giving us the least problems with personality conflicts.

We can clash with those of our own characteristics, in which detail is right and which detail is wrong. The PPR forum reminds me of the discussions I had throughout my life with people like me, we can drive each other crazy too. I found the real neurotypicals, in the middle to be the easiest to get along with.

I have seen an actual bellcurve for personality as a measure of the national distribution of personalities related to the Myers and Briggs personality test and the distribution in the middle is similar to IQ, in that the middle has an average of introversion and extroversion as opposed to and average of higher and lower intelligence on the IQ bellcurve.

Here is the link:

http://www.thoughtful-self-improvement.com/percentage-of-introverts.html

Note that it lists the extreme introverts and extreme extroverts at about 13% each, then the spectrum closes in on the middle gradually until it reaches a mix of both introversion and extroversion. According to the study in 1998 introverted traits slightly edge extroverted traits, overall 50.7% to 49.3%. So, what we have is almost a perfect mix of human variation in our country.

Other countries rate much higher on the introvert scale. Culture plays a part in the traits that are displayed stronger. I imagine if a study was conducted today that introverts would have a slightly higher advantage because even though we are increasingly electronically connected, at the same time we have become more physically isolated from others in our actual day to day activities; many of us spend the majority of our time interacting with devices rather than actual people that we can reach out and touch; I don't think any personality type is immune from the behavior.