Types of Autism

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When people talk about how autism presents differently in different people, and had it's actually several different conditions under the same umbrella, it seems like a contradiction because if they are both different in terms of behavior and neurology, t. It's not though, and that's because psychological disorders aren't defined on either the neurological or the behavioral level, but the psychological one, which is between the two. The main difference between the psychological level and the behavior level is includes thoughts and other internal factors as well. The issue with autism is that the nature of the disorder makes it very hard for researchers to peer into the psych, so in all likelihood it actually is multiple different disorders being lumped together, and it's just too hard to separate them from each other. Aspergers and autistic disorder weren't merged because there is no fundamental differences in forms of autism, but because they weren't meaningful ways to differentiate it. In general though, autism is characterized by a feedback loop between it's two core traits. Social difficulties make obsessive interests more appealing, and in turn obsessive interests So I'm going to propose several different forms of autism which describe the root psychological cause of the disorder, which may be pushed to the disorder point by additional factors, such as a detailed-centered cognitive style, and various abnormalities in memory and other cognitive functions. By being able to differentiate different forms of autism, treatment may be seeked better. As it stands, standard autism treatment is just brute-force behaviorism, which is a terrible idea.

Dialectical Autism: This is characterized by having relatively higher effective than cognitive empathy. This can in turn be caused by having elevated effective empathy, deficient cognitive empathy, or a mixture of both, but they are all the same form of autism because they all result in the same behavioral patter: the person becomes asocial due to avoiding social situations because their ability to feel pain is greater than their ability to deal with it. What causes this to become autism rather than avoidant personality disorder is where it falls in the developmental cycle: autism develops in childhood, when key social skills are still being learned, while avoidance personality disorder onsets in adulthood, and the psychological pattern behind it is more cognitive than emotional. It's hard to detect the relative deficit though because most measures of effective empathy are biased so they are affected by cognitive empathy. So tests need to be devised specifically to test effective empathy in people on the autism spectrum. On a neurological level, the intense world theory provides a good explanation for this form of autism. It's probably the most common form of high-functioning autism, but could occur in low-functioning autism as well, and is probably equally common in males and females, though gender dsyphoria is probably also more common in it than other forms of autism. The disorder probably has a subtype where both effective and cognitive empathy are deficient, which would be more common in males, and a subtype where both are higher, which would be more common in females, and the differences between the two subtypes creates a gender-bias in diagnosis.

Autistic Sociopathy: In this case, it's defined in opposition dialectical autism, where it's a case of autism where the cognitive empathy is relatively greater than the cognitive empathy, which is a pattern characteristic of sociopathy. Because autism is generally characterized by a deficit in cognitive empathy, it should be an extremely rare, but occasionally still apparently occurs, and the ultimate psychological cause for the autism is probably more in the obsessive traits than the social ones, and these cause it to manifest differently form sociopathy. It's pretty much exclusively found in high-functioning autistic males as it aligns closely with the extreme-male brain theory of autism, and is over-represented in media depictions of autism.

Specific Learning Disorder Autism: Autism is classified as a pervasive developmental disorder, but in some cases it's cause may essentially be a specific learning with language or some social mechanism which in turn had a greater impact all areas of life. Neurologically the most likely cause would probably be damage to the temporal lobes, and it's closely associated with Non-verbal Learning Disorder. Could appear in combination with either of the previous two forms of autism.

Motor-centric Autism: In this case, problems with motor control, especially with regards to speech, interfere with social development. In and of itself it wouldn't be enough to cause autism, but the motor problems are probably associated with brain abnormalities which cause other psychological effects, and in combination they cause autism. While it shouldn't actually impair intelligence, the person should present as low functioning, and communication diffiucties may impair the development of verbal intelligence as well as created biases in the testing process itself. As such, it is probably best tested for with intelligence tests made specifically for testing intelligence in autistic people. Could appear in combination with dialectical autism or specific-learning disorder autism, but seems unlikely to appear with autistic sociopathy.

Symptomatic Autism: In this case, autism isn't the condition, but just a symptom of general cognitive failure. It's not so much the case that the person has autism, but they have such severe mental retardation that they meet all the criteria for autism. The increased tendency to diagnosis mental retardation as autism because there is more supports for such is one of the reasons for the increase in autism diagnosis. The presence of real widespread cognitive impairment can be used to differentiate it from motor-centric autism. Anyone who says this is "real autism" doesn't know very much about autism.

So that's what I have so far. More research needs to be devoted to this idea.

I don't have any of those autisms

Then please elaborate.

Alright. Both my empathies are low so I'm not the first or the second, NVLD is the opposite to me, my motor coordination isn't significantly impaired, and I did fine in school so I assume I'm not mentally ret*d.

In the third paragraph you write "the cognitive empathy is relatively greater than the cognitive empathy," which obviously does not make sense. Can you clarify please?

Also, is this jst something that you thought up logically from studying autism or have you researched it using specific cases?

I believe he meant "cognitive empathy is relatively greater than the affective empathy"

I meant to write "the cognitive empathy is relatively greater than the effect empathy,", because it's the opposite trend of the previous one.

This is based on several different theories of autism and cases synthesized together.

1. The first two are about *relative* differences, so both being low is absolutely not a contradiction. If both processes are actually always impaired by themselves and not from their interaction, it would be autistic sociopathy, but if the effective empathy is just lower because of the lower cognitive empathy (either because it just tests lower, or it's stunted by social inhibition) . The important factor for the prior is how it would have effected childhood development, not how it applies to you now.

2. The exact opposite of NVLD also counts as a specific learning disorder, and it's just as associated with autism, I just forgot to list it. Both non-verbal and verbal impairment effect communication.

3. The whole point of this is it's NOT easy to just differentiate the different types, and more research should be done in figuring out how to differentiate them.

What exactly do you mean?


I don't have a learning disorder diagnosis though.

How do social difficulties make obsessive interests more appealing?

Autistic people are anything but sociopaths. Sociopaths LOVE being social and are highly skilled at using their superficial charm to manipulate others. They are born liars and lie so much that it feels unnatural to them when they tell the truth. They have huge egos, show and feel absolutely no remorse for their actions, are often highly successful because they don't care about what they do to anyone who just happens to be in their way, and may deliberately harm and torture animals. In fact, autistic people are more likely to be harmed by sociopaths.

And the form of Autism I have is Asperger's Syndrome, which is a mild form of autism, and is a real thing whether people say it is or not. That is all there is to it.

Because if you're not interacting with other people, you're going to entertain yourself by doing something else.

And that's why autistic sociopathy is not sociopathy.

The thing is there is literally no difference between Aspergers and Autism, Aspergers is just autism with more restrictions on it's expression. Can't have a language delay, cognitive impairment, ect. Someone who had a speech delay with HFA is pretty much exactly the same as someone with aspergers, which is why they were merged. It just isn't a meaningful distinction. And HFA is grouped with LFA because they often can't be differentiated because of problems with IQ testing for people on the spectrum.