Was rainman low or high functioning?

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This is just something I'm kinda interested to hear.

Kinda straddles the line, I think.

Definitely low functioning. Thats no brainer.

According to the article: http://www.duke.edu/~jds31/Papers/autism.html and several other sources I found by briefly googling (I haven't seen the movie yet), he is high-functioning.

Keep in mind (for people who automatically consider him low-functioning) that HFA does not mean mild.

What does HF mean then?

I see him as low functioning. Maybe he would have been high if he got the help he needed as a child. He was put in a institution after an incident when he burned his baby brother. So it was a PTSD moment there he had when Charlie was about to take a shower. That was a sign there he did care about his brother because he didn't want him to burn again. I think he was eight years older than Charlie so that would mean he was 8-10 years old when it happened.

Low.

Rainman is low functioning. He needs a lot of assistance to get by in life, not just financial.

It seems like there isn't any agreed upon definition of high functioning, but I consider it someone who can speak, dress himself, handle tasks, etc., to at least a basic degree. I say that Hoffman's character straddles the line because he can do these things, but it was hard to imagine him living on his own without any assistance. Like I find myself saying a lot on these boards, it's a very broad spectrum we're dealing with here, and fitting people into two or three or even fifteen convenient categories isn't possible.

the Rain Man story wasn't even inspired by an autistic person. Sorry folks. It wasn't.

Some of the people Hoffman studied were. But the key fellow was Kim Peek.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Peek

Hoffman DID play what was labelled an autistic person. And whether he was playing high or low functioning could be argued either way; I think there were elements of each, but then again, it's a spectrum, and we could easily label him mid-functioning and it would probably be closer to an accurate impression.

I think he's been HF, but in recent years may have gotten pushed lower on the functioning-rating by the improved autism-detection.

Like this:

Rain Man is HF and thought of as being near the beginning of the autistic spectrum.

(Because there aren't a lot of autistic people who function better than Rain Man.)

Then more and more people more HF than Rain Man are acknowledge as being on the spectrum.

(Because more of these people start to get problems in a changing society. At the same time, information about ASDs become more widespread by the internet and the world growing closer together.)

And now there are autistic people who're more HF than Rain Man who in turn is pushed further down the spectrum for being able to do less things/being lower-functioning than other autistic people.

I knew that. I think they are asking about the movie character though? Could be wrong.

Yes I am

It entails a more complex response than I am willing to give today since I have an exam tomorrow morning. If it was mild autism, then they would just call it mild autism. Some moderate autism people stradle HFA and LFA. As a result, not all people with HFA can be mild. For a more complex answer, you can try googling it but beware that many blurb articles are not written by professionals but rather by people who think HFA=mild.

He was an autistic savant. But def. low functioning.

In the movie it says that he is "fairly high functioning," when the brother first meets him and the caretaker is explaining Rainman to the brother.