What is low-functioning autism like?

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Like, the most severe forms of it. Google/wikipedia mostly talk about AS/high-functioning.

From what I gather (and my mother being a good source of information), the more severe Autistics are unable to function without significant assistance. One person my mother mentioned (she studied as a speech pathologist, but this person wasn't one of her cases) was so severe, he could only scream at everything, and even lacked bowel/bladder control. If i use the description of a previous post, his mind lack all filters, and is taking in a hell of a lot more information. This individual is an adult (or elderly) now, and as to his current condition, I do not know.

In my life, I have met 2 adults with low-functioning Autism, and both fitted this same description too, only with different ''personalities''. One was incontinent too, and just liked to trance around with no clothes on (except a nappy) all day, in a playroom with brightly-coloured toys (since he was always really happy when around brightly-coloured things). The only time we ever saw a smile on his face was when he was on his own (we once peeped in through the window of his playroom and saw he was so happy). But he was unhappy when people were around, even his own mother. He was a young man of 22 at the time, and was so handsome. I didn't think he was severely Autistic when I first saw a photo of him, even though he looked unsettled and unhappy in the photo (not everybody smiles in every photo).

Then the other person I met with it was a girl, and she seemed a little different. She seemed happy in a social environment, but didn't speak to anybody, only walked around on her own constantly flapping her hands and making quiet humming noises. She wasn't incontinent, but she still needed round the clock care, and couldn't communicate properly with anyone. I wish I was like her really, because as long as nobody spoke to her, she seemed relaxed, and just went along with the flow. With me, I get upset when people don't speak to me, yet I find some parts of social interaction hard at the same time. Also, I find it hard to go along with the flow. Instead I get stressed out, and tell people, then they just think I'm complaining and spoiling everyone's time on family outings.

i think they can't say a word or undestand what people are saying to them. they never look at anyone. they don't try to pretend to be like everyone else, like try not to flap their hands or pace when there are people around. they can't follow rules and can't learn new things for lack of communication. how can you explain new things, or rules, to someone who doesn't understand what you're saying?
they live in their own world, not like we as aspies do, but constantly twenty four seven. a child will not respond to the bell at school and won't go to class. he'll walk around in class, too. and there are jerking movements every few minutes in their whole body they have no control over. something to do with the electricity in the brain, i guess. it does look like minor electriciy bolts.
they rock constantly. they need to be taken care of all the time and can't be left alone because they can't fend for themselves. life is extremely harsh.

i would argue (from my observations over 9 years of working with adults with LFA, that the best description (at least from my aspie perspective) is to think of a volume nob, it can be off (NT) it can be just barely audible(protoaspie), loude and clear(aspie) drowns out almost everything else (LFA)

Being non verbal has nothing to do with receptive language, I work as a 1:1 with a man who understands english and romanian, Now that there is a reason to bother listening to these othere people when they make noise, may be a bit of a forgein concept, however this like most of the other "whys" in life is almost entirely a learned behavior.
What has always struck me with this individual is a lack of generalizing "paying attention" to what you are doing, ie will trip over something in clear view for 20 feet because it isn't where his attention is.
For me many of my symptoms have been attention related (missdiagnosed with adhd) things like paying attention to the tonality of the teachers voice while missing all of the content (cause I did't relize it was of any importance, up until this point in life you were just supposed to sit quietly while the adults go on about nonsense, I saw no difference. )
I get uncomfortable and want to get away from caotic situations, he will pace and then hide in the bathroom.
Once again it is a similar experince, though I think that for him it is more intense, if only by virtue of having not learned the same coping skills that I have.

I suspect that LFA are more intelligent and understand a lot more then we give credit.

Anyway, they don't live in their own world, they live in this world a lot more then any NT does, they feel everything and see everything, and it hurts.

If you're interested, search for Amanda Baggs. She is what clinicians would call low-functioning but she is highly intelligent and articulate. She explains her experiences of the world both in a video on YouTube and in her blog.

Mmhm, yeah, she's got a pretty good perspective on it. But you've got to remember she's only one person, so that other non-verbal people are going to have their own unique experiences, which might be completely different from hers.

I'm going to assume that by "low-functioning" you mean "autistic and very disabled", because honestly, LFA just doesn't have an actual meaning in medicine. It's really little better than a pigeonhole to put people into when the doctor stereotypes them that way.

Best I can say is probably read about lots of people who have various kinds of autism, and get your own picture.

I should recommend the Autism Hub:
http://autism-hub.com/

There are a lot of decent blogs gathered together, some from individuals and some from families.

This is one I'd recommend--
http://autism.typepad.com/autism/

Last edited by Callista on 29 Jul 2011, 2:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think that pretty much nails it. Imagine that you no longer had the filters to create coping mechanisms and could not even pretend to behave like the NT folks around you do, or to tune out any of the sensory issues that bother you.

Yes, Amanda Baggs is but one person, but I think she is a good starting point as she can articulate her experiences. Bit like Daniel Tammet and savantism - of course he's not going to represent everyone but he can talk his processes and explain them well.

http://www.amazon.com/How-Talk-Lips-Don ... 155970859X was an interesting look at a lower functioning person to me. And the kindle book is currently free.

I've known a lot of LFA people, because I volunteer with autistic kids. Here are some that come to mind:

A 10 year old boy with some sort of syndrome that caused physical abnormalities and autism. He had three communicative words, 'no' and two kinds of yes - one for yes/no questions (eg 'are you having fun?') and one for questions that are really commands (eg 'will you behave today?'). He also had a few signs, which were all prompted, and he could name the letters and numbers but showed no sign of understanding what they meant. His receptive language was pretty good. He was not toilet trained, and for a long time I thought he couldn't dress himself until his Mom told me he'd only dress himself if he was alone in the room (I guess then he figured he wasn't going to get help dressing). In terms of behavior, he had a strong fascination with fans, blinking lights and water, and we had many a happy time swimming together. He'd trill and flap his hands when he was happy. When he was upset, which usually seemed to be set off by auditory overload or being forced to stop an activity he liked, he'd sit on the ground and refuse to move, make a howling noise, and sometimes try to pull my hair. I remember being struck by how, even though we're so different in functioning level, his body language and way of processing things seemed a lot like me.

A 12 year old girl who hadn't entered puberty yet and looked about 7. She spoke a few words and phrases with a lot of echolalia, so it was a guessing game to figure out if she meant what she said. Her family had moved from Britain two years ago, and everything she learnt before moving was spoken in a British accent while everything she learnt afterwards was spoken in a Canadian accent. And to communicate with her I had to use British phrasing for things, like saying 'bathers on' when I wanted her to put her swimsuit on. She could dress herself, but needed prompting, and had no sense of privacy so she'd happily wander out of the changing area completely naked if I didn't watch her. Her receptive language was poorer than the first boy, sometimes she seemed to understand me and other times she didn't. (It's my impression that echolalic kids tend to have poorer receptive language.) She liked to write and could write a few words such as her name, but seemed to be unable to read anything. Any amount of waiting would get her upset and she'd scream like a peacock and start hitting herself. She enjoyed swimming at first until she realized that both the pools that program used had salty water, because she'd swum in salt water several years ago and gotten nauseous from swallowing the water.

A 15 year old boy with almost no speech - he apparently said a couple words, but I never heard him say them in my presence. His general way of communicating was to grab your body and move it while grunting loudly - eg ask me to pick up his coat by putting my hand on his coat while grunting. He also used a picture book to communicate, and had some signs that he never used unprompted. He really liked campers (the vehicles) and had a collection of pictures of campers that he showed people. His social skills were pretty good considering his limited communication, and he had good receptive language.

A 10 year old boy with a lot of echolalic speech. If you said 'say' and then the phrase, he'd echo it back including the 'say' - eg when he met my brother his Dad said "say 'Hello [brother's name]'" and he said "say hello [brother's name]'. He was nearly always muttering stuff to himself, which as far as I could tell consisted of quotes from TV shows. He struggled with receptive language - if you said 'do this' and clapped he'd clap, but if you said 'can you copy this for me now?' he'd just get confused. When he did hand-eye-coordination stuff like throwing a ball, he'd look at the target, look away and then move. He really liked whoopie cushions and shiny ribbons.

A 14 year old girl with autism and CP, who was able to walk short distances assisted, but used a wheelchair most of the time. She loved swimming and I'd help her walk around in the pool, splashing the whole time. Her receptive language was extremely poor - as far as I could tell, the only word she understood was 'splash'. Basically, whenever someone said 'splash', she'd splash more vigorously, whether they'd said 'can you splash?' 'don't splash' or even 'watch out, you're going to get splashed' (when we ventured near a kid about to jump in). She had a very extreme need for routine, when I took her into the family change room instead of the women's change room she screamed, banged her head on the wall, bit her hand and bit me when I tried to stop her self-injury. She didn't calm down until we had her changed and in the pool area, at which point she was immediately fine. I had a nasty bruise the next day from her biting me. She was completely dependent in self-care and was not toilet trained, though part of that could've been her CP as well as her autism.

So, as you can see, they're all individuals. LFA looks different in every person, in terms of what they can and can't do, how sociable they are, how much they understand of their environment, their likes and dislikes and so forth. And I've found with each person I have to learn a new 'language' of how that particular person communicates and how I can communicate with them.

I've met low-functioning people without Autism too. I'm not sure if ''mental retardation'' is offensive, but I don't know any other medical name for this.

I know a boy of 23 who is in a wheelchair and cannot say anything but ''hello''. Each time he sees people walk past him, he gets happy and waves to them and says ''hello'', smiling all the time. This is the only social interaction he can do. Also he is very cuddly, and always holds his arms out to give you a cuddle. And if somebody responds back when he says hello to them, he gets excited. He also babbles, but cannot talk, and when he sees an unfamiliar object, his mind can't grasp what it is, and so he points to it and gets excited, like a baby would. But he mostly loves people, and would prefer ''playing'' with people than with any object.

He needs 24-hour care, and he can't do anything by himself. His parents say that they have to do everything for him like a baby. But he is not Autistic, but he does have a severe developmental disorder. But he is a lovely young man. Between me and you, he is more happier than any other person I have met. His parents say that he is happy from the second he wakes up from the second he goes to sleep. Nothing upsets or worries him.

If you go to youtube and look up the user "kgaccount" (her videos will also pop up if you search for 'low functioning autistic adult'). I think her son's case is one of the severest cases of low-functioning autism I have seen.

My cousin is an example of a person with low-functioning autism. She's just one example, though.


She doesn't really have speech. She can say a few words "Mum", "car", "yum", and "no", but they are not used in conventional ways. However, there is a logic to their use: for example, if she's angry/upset, she'll repeat "No no no no no", and I've heard her repeat "yum yum yum yum" in response to food. She can use picture charts to communicate how she's feeling and what she wants: otherwise, usually she just takes someone's arm gently and pulls them toward whatever she wants. I've never seen her make eye contact.

As a teenager, she had screaming meltdowns every day. These were helped partly by better medication, which I don't know if she's still on, and by her mother either finding or making special clothing that had no inner seams to irritate her skin. She also used to hate wearing shoes, but she's apparently getting more used to it now. She loves the feeling of water on her skin, and she'd spend all day in the bathtub if she could. She also used to want to sit on the toilet all the time, which may or may not have been because it gave her an opportunity to take her uncomfortable clothes off.
She's much calmer now.

I don't know what her obsessions are now, but when she was at my house a lot (my mother used to babysit her), she liked tearing advertising catalogues up, and watching music videos: particularly the Wiggles. She could sit for hours engrossed in just those things.

She isn't completely toilet trained: usually she can let someone know when she needs to go, but she has accidents. She is severely ret*d. She attended a local special school until she was 18, now she's in a small group home.

That's the name they use in the DSM--so, no, it's not offensive. It's starting to be; "ret*d" (as an adjective, as in, "a ret*d person") is considered offensive in many areas. You could say "developmentally delayed", but that has a slightly different meaning--slower development, with the implication that catching up is possible. Developmental delay is what you'd say about a child, not an adult. "Cognitive disability" is another phrase that can be used. Personally, I'm just annoyed that people would think that this particular diagnosis made a good insult to begin with. It's really more a matter of whether you treat people with respect than just using the right words.

Regarding your friend with the profound MR--I've read a lot of accounts of people with this diagnosis, who need intensive or pervasive support; and it seems that they have the same potential for happiness that anyone does. Their disability doesn't seem to reduce their chances for a satisfying life. Makes you think twice before tagging such people with "low quality of life"--their quality of life, as they experience it, is probably as good as anybody else's.