SPD vs Aspergers
12 Jul 2013, 7:44 pm
I thought I fit the SPD (Schizoid Personality Disorder) criteria on wikipedia and was beginning to doubt I had Aspergers until I saw this,
Asperger syndrome Asperger syndrome (AS), sometimes called "schizoid disorder of childhood," is an autism-spectrum disorder. SPD does not involve impairments in nonverbal communication such as a lack of eye contact, unusual prosody or a pattern of restricted interests or repetitive behaviors. Compared to AS, SPD is characterized by prominent conduct disorder, better adult adjustment and a slightly increased risk of schizophrenia.[43]
I'm curious if anyone else has looked into the differences between these two.
I myself did not have conduct disorder. I do have some eye contact issues (can keep eye contact for a bit but then get freaked out and look away) and I do have restricted interests and behaviors. Otherwise though the SPD criteria fit very well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizoid_p ... y_disorder
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12 Jul 2013, 8:38 pm
Schizoid disorder of childhood or adolescence is an old DSM-III (1980) diagnosis. (It was not viewed as an Autistic spectrum condition.) In the DSM-III-R (1984), the American Psychiatric Association removed it from the manual. They stated that schizoid disorder of childhood or adolescence was an erroneous category, and that its symptoms could be better explained on the Autism spectrum. Asperger's disorder wasn't introduced until the DSM-IV (1994) and DSM-IV-TR (2000). Of course, none of those diagnoses are used in the DSM-5. There is only a single Autism spectrum disorder.
The ICD-10 uses schizoid disorder of childhood or adolescence as a synonym for Asperger's syndrome. However, I doubt that it will be continued in the ICD-11 (now in beta).
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13 Jul 2013, 5:52 am
A not much serious article that talks about that:
http://kevin-goodman.com/?p=1724
Extreme introversion could indicate Asperger or schizoid personality, both of which probably claim a fair percentage of scientists. A number of researchers argue that both Asperger syndrome and schizoid personality are types of personality rather than “disorders.” Nevertheless, individuals with Aspergers can struggle with interpersonal communication, which can be a source of suffering because they often have an interest in sociality, those with schizoid personality, on the other hand, prefer to be alone, their introversion is less awkward as it is a matter of preference. Individuals with Asperger syndrome tend to focus on details and adopt narrow obsessions, which they pursue relentlessly; individuals with schizoid personality have rich internal worlds, which they prefer to the social environment.
Both Asperger and schizoid personality types lend themselves to the sciences. The narrow focus, single-minded obsessions, and attention to details that characterize Asperger syndrome also characterize scientific research. Schizoid personalities have rich imaginations, which allow them to see numerous possibilities, making them good abstract thinkers which when combined with a preference for solitary living compliments a life of science or writing.
13 Jul 2013, 6:39 am
Two studies about that, before the official recognition of AS
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... x/abstract
Schizoid children (clinically resembling Asperger's autistic psychopaths), high-grade, speaking autistic children and normal children individually matched for age, sex and intelligence were compared on a variety of tests.
The results suggest that children with schizoid personality disorder are distinct from autistic children on the one hand and from normal children on the other. In all cognitive, language and memory tests the schizoid children were more distractable than, the normal group. In language function they showed similar disabilities to the autistic group, though to a lesser extent. Unlike autistic children, they were not perseverative. On two tests of affect, the schizoid group used even fewer emotional constructs when describing people than did the autistics
It is not much clear what diagnosis these "schizoids" and (high-functioning) "autistics" will have today - perhaps they will both be diagnosed with AS? The author (Sula Wolff) had the theory that schizoid personality and Asperger's "Autistic Psychopathy" were the same thing; the paper of Lorna Wing, Asperger's Sundrome: a clinical account, was wrote largely as a reply to these paper of Wolff.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3256377
Several scales are described for measuring aspects of eccentricity and social isolation; in particular, for assessing schizoid and schizotypal personality and for rating abnormal non-verbal expression. The latter is shown to be reliable, and the former to have a measure of validity. There was an association between schizoid personality traits and abnormalities of speech and non-verbal expression. However, abnormal non-verbal expression, but not schizoid personality traits or DSM-III schizotypal personality disorder, was particularly likely to occur in those subjects who had evidence of neurological deficit, and childhood symptoms indicative of developmental disorder. Abnormal non-verbal expression, but not personality disorder, was also associated with other characteristic features of Asperger's syndrome, such as unusual, 'special' interests. It is suggested that Asperger's syndrome is a distinct syndrome from either schizoid or schizotypal personality disorder, but may be a risk factor for the development of schizoid personality disorder.
I think that these paper of Digby Tantan was important in settling the Wolff-Wing dispute (Asperger's as a type of SPD or as a type of autism?), showing that many symptoms of AS had low association with the symptoms of SPD.
The correlations that Tantan calculated:
Abnormal non verbal communication x abnormal speech: 0,17
Abnormal non verbal communication x clumsy: 0,30**
Abnormal non verbal communication x special interest: 0,18*
Abnormal non verbal communication x Verbal IQ: -0,13
Abnormal non verbal communication x Performance IQ: -0,11
Abnormal non verbal communication x schizoid score: 0,32**
Abnormal non verbal communication x diagnosis of schizotypal personality: 0,28*
Abnormal speech x clumsy: 0,19
Abnormal spech x special interest: -0,11
Abnormal spech x VIQ: -0,18*
Abnormal spech x PIQ: -0,05
Abnormal spech x schizoid score:0,34**
Abnormal speech x diagnosis of schizotypal personality: 0,28*
clumsy x special interest: 0,13
clumsy x VIQ: -0,21*
clumsy x PIQ: -0,12
clumsy x schizoid score: -0,04
clumsy x diagnosis of schizotypal personality: -0,23
special interest x VIQ: 0,00
special interest x PIQ: -0,04
special interest x schizoid score: 0,18
special interest x diagnosis of schizotypal personality: 0,28*
VIQ x PIQ: 0,50**
VIQ x schizoid score: 0,07
VIQ x diagnosis of schizotypal personality: 0,29*
PIQ x schizoid score: 0,14
schizoid score x diagnosis of schizotypal personality: 0,49**
Looking to the developmental history, the study also concluded that childhood symptoms like "speech anomalies", "abnormal non-verbal communication", and "lack of imagination" (I suppose that with "lack of imagination" the author wanted to say "lack of pretend play") are strongly associated, in adulthood, with "abnormal non-verbal communication" and "special interests", but not with the schizoid score or with a diagnosis of schizotypal personality.
13 Jul 2013, 6:54 am
My father was diagnosed with schizoid features, and he also have autistic features.
He has traits from both HFA and SPD.
He was diagnosed as a young adult with oppositional defiant disorder and traits of SPD. He was also told that he had a certain tendency to develop schizophrenia, and that he could have developed it later in life (which didn't happen).
He is totally indifferent to prise or criticism, didn't feel offended when he was teased in school, and he almost never feels emotions like anxiety or fear. His self-esteem is just avarage.
It also tooks him a lot to get angry, he gets annoyed at most.
He also hardly ever feels sad; I've seen him cry only once in all my life.
He shows affection only to me and my brother, and to animals.
My mother said that when he was younger he didn't seem to be really interested in relationships, and refused the girls' requests to have dates with him.
He didn't have much trouble finding a job, and he has always worked all his life, even because he quit school when he was 13 due to his issues in school (he was even put in special classes during elementary school).
He does have obsessive interests, routines and many others AS traits.
He has issues with non-verbal communication at times, also.
He can understand facial expressions a bit better than I do, but he can't understand some of them. Also, he sometimes lacks eye-contact.
He does not lack motor coordination, and was very good at sports as a kid.
He had speech delay and motor skills delay as a child.
13 Jul 2013, 9:25 am
I know that Elyn Saks, who can be said to have "high-functioning" schizophrenia, was originally thought by her husband-to-be to have AS, until she revealed she had schizophrenia. It seems that high-functioning members of both the schizophrenia and autism spectra can look very similar from the outside, perhaps due to similar coping skills.
Also, to add to the confusion, there is this article on "schizophrenic autism," published in 2002, describing a (or even 'the') core process of the schizophrenia spectrum disorders:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1489853/
Honestly, it escapes me how "schizophrenic autism" is that different from "autism autism." It looks like the core issue in "schizophrenic autism" is a lack of the "ability to 'resonate with the world', to empathize with others, an ability to become affected and to act suitably, as a pre-reflective immersion in the intersubjective world." Some more on the key aspects. Basically, people with "schizophrenic autism" have a "crisis of common sense" or a "lack of natural evidence," which are defined as follows:
"Pre-reflective" seems to mean "before reflection" (i.e. it's there without even reflecting on it, implicit). It seems that in the schizophrenia spectrum disorders, people lose (or perhaps never have in the first place) their pre-reflective abilities in the domains of self, world, and other people. At least when it comes to other people, though, it looks a lot like "autism autism."
I can certainly see these issues in myself and I have experienced psychosis, and when they weren't sure whether I was psychotic, they diagnosed me with schizotypal personality disorder, a schizophrenia spectrum disorder. But perhaps these also have heavy overlap with the autism spectrum?
