AS / HFA Confusion!

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Can anyone give a dummie's guide on the differences between AS and HFA? Can one group do some things the other can't? Thanks.

If you have AS it means you had no delay in speech. There are probably some more differences, but I'm not exactly sure what they are and I don't want to give information that isn't correct.

The developmental delay is the big difference, which usually involves speech and qualities of speech, self-care, etc..

I have heard some professionals say that HFAers are better with the performance stuff and Aspergers are better with verbal stuff. However, I've met plenty of people to contradict this.

Mostly, the differences seem to be the most obvious in early childhood, the delays and all.

The best rule of thumb for telling the two apart is something I read here:

People with AS like other people and want to have friends even though often they can't.

People with HFA usually don't.

Still a rule of thumb that can be misleading, though. The best rule of thumb to remember, is that there is no rule of thumb to sum up the difference. The difference can be many and varied depending on the person, severity of the autism/aspergers, life experiences etc etc.
I like Sophist's explanation best.

My son is HFA and he likes being around other people even if he doesn't react with them. I'm AS and I can take other people or leave them as far as interaction but I'm also much like him (only I had normal language development and no self-care issues growing up), I can be just content with people in the same room.

I've heard that one a lot. I've also heard its exact opposite.

The thing it leaves out, is that it assumes that someone doesn't want friends, if they may simply be so bad at making friends that they aren't even able to look like they want friends. This is a very damaging assumption at the root of the above description, which was guesses from outward behavior to begin with. I know a guy who was labeled low-functioning and desperately wants friends, but people think he looks aloof and indifferent or something. I have had times in my life when I wanted to talk to people, but was told emphatically that I did not want to talk to people because of the way I looked.

Actually, that's what a lot of these boundary lines leave to be desired. They rely on the clustering of traits together that don't necessarily cluster together.

Sometimes, I've really been tempted to say something like...

"I'm diagnosed with autism. And I see other autistic people doing things I can't do. So they must be aspies, since I'm autistic. And when I see them not being able to do things I can do, well that must be an aspie thing again."

Because that's how a lot of people seem to judge this stuff: Off of themselves and one other person or something. The arbitrariness is utterly frustrating, and I'd love sometime to do a parody of it by collecting up a bunch of my traits and saying that their opposite means some other diagnosis.

I think autism is too complex to be confined to these sort of simple divisions.

Even the DSM criteria would have some of Kanner's original patients being diagnosed with Asperger's, and vice versa.

Thanks. This thread's been useful to me.

What I meant was how people really feel, not how they seem to 'present'.

When I was a kid my AS was so badly handled that for a while I really thought I didn't want friends my own age and so dipped down to the HFA level socially.

Now I've just got AS.

But the kicker is that NTs misread us - that's the useful part for me. I'm probably accidentally sabotaging myself and don't even know it - people misread me as unsocial, etc. even though I bathe, wear OK clothes and try to talk to people, looking them in the eye, etc.

I'll keep looking for more things about my 'presentation' to work on.

Thank God I'm in a safe job with the time and personal space to do that. I wasn't always in that place and a lot of people still aren't.

I have heard HFA does not actually exist. That it is either Aspergers or Kanners, which even there, is no absolute separation, since not everyone agrees on what is or is not one or the other. For those that think there is HFA and AS, many think they are in fact one in the same. I have heard that what is described as HFA is really no different then what is described as AS in definitions (one example is:http://www.askanaspie.com/). I have also heard that the next DVSM may make no distinction between AS and Kanners and classify all as Autism. The only conclusive thing I have heard may have as much to do with luck as actual ability, is what impact said traits have on overall quality of life, for some, perhaps, even many, the impact is negligable as they may or may not have a lot of traits, and what they do have is not very impeding or severe in living a good quality of life.

For some, even some that maybe considered high functioning (which really means that, while they visit lala dreamland now and then are not as constant visitors as severe kanners autistics can be, who then have far less ability to operate in daily life) it is really a matter of degree and impact on livliehood and functioning therein. Some of which can be aided by medicine or therapies, but never all and never for good, especially since humans tend to change, so maybe a med will no longer work, new problems emerge, or one slips in their practices or whatever.

Luck, in that one with any AS is in the right place at the right time with the right parents and the right resources, meaning that, if it is known and considered help worthy, if a place has any help to offer, if they parents know or care and have access, if the parents have other resources like doc friends, relatives, or money, then even some lower functioning autistics MAY be able to function well and overcome some of their barriers to having a good quality of life.

You can also consider ability, while some maybe buried or whatnot, some may have enough abilities to circumvent obstacles of quality of life and function well enough that no one may even notice that have any ASD (for those that don't know, Autism Spectrum Disorder, or the umbrella term for all Autistic conditions like PDD, AS, and Kanner's) at all.

Quality of life, while may be open to interpretation, is in layman's terms, is a satistiying, fullfilling, productive life whereby one can live on one's own. This often involves many if not all of the following: can take care of own living space, can afford or aquire a living space, can find a mate when one has a place and a function or work or job, can get work or find a function or a needed duty desired by society or the environment to which one is inhabiting, can make friends or aquaintences where and when needed or network (even if one does not like humans or interaction, it is virtually impossible to truely exist safely on one's own, as no one would know if you were missing, hurt, no one to get supplies from for which you need but can not replicate, no one to heal you or care for you when you are too sick to do so, no one to visit you body when you die or bury you, etc, there can be many more), ability to feed oneself (which is bad if you can not cook at all or at least do not have a garden of your own. Which by the way, can be fun to have, i have a few times.), taking care of oneself when sick, managing money or bills, transportation access (like driving), getting dressed (like how to tie shows or get clothes or put them on and how often and when to clean them.), and so on. I could probably list many more, but as, even I do not know them all (perhaps one of my problems), i could not anyway.

HFA = Autistic Disorder (aka Kanner's Autism) only a higher functioning subtype (without the comorbitidies of MR and such), HFA is not a medical diagnosis, just a categorical term for the level of functioning of an individual that has Autistic Disorder.

"Quality of life" didn't sound like quality of life at all. It sounded like daily living skills, and in particular the kind of daily living skills that neurotypical/non-disabled people are expected to have (they are not necessarily expected to repair their own cars, grow/harvest/butcher their own food, etc). Many people mistake those for "quality of life". Study after study shows that people without many or all of those skills rate their quality of life (happiness in life) the same or higher as people with all those skills. (I have very few of them and I am fine.)

The only difference I've ever heard between the two is that in HFA, there is communication and speech delay and in AS there is not. But I'd think many people with HFA would eventually develop speech, making them actually closer to AS. It's all very confusing.

Namiko, do you think there's any difference between Kanners autism and AS? Forget the HFA/LFA distinction, it doesn't exist. They still have to meet the same criteria for Kanners autism. Kanners autism doesn't say they mustn't communicate their whole life. Else, you'd be classifying most Kanners as AS. Being able to talk does not mean the problems with communication are gone.

I can, and do, live on my own. My life, however, is very far from satisfying and is certainly not fulfilling in the least. I don't "live", I merely exist. Does this mean I have AS, then, or am I merely a miserable whacko who just doesn't "get" what it means to be human?

Being a nitpick, even if there are more similarities than differences between HF Autistic Disorder and Aspergers, I would still like to see them set apart simply because of the early childhood development differences. For a child who didn't talk until he/she was 5 or 6 has had different experiences than an Aspie who has talked since the age of 10 months.

I prefer the distinction because I hate throwing things together in one big mess. Maybe that's my Aspieness coming out. But I think to understand the two better, they need to be kept distinct, even if in adulthood many HFAers/Aspies cannot be discerned one from the other.

I'd prefer to keep them separated, not because of the difference in experiences, but I reckon there is a neurological reason for the language problems that doesn't go away. Its a little different wiring even from AS wiring. Whether they end up learning to speak or not has nothing to do with it. If you learn techniques for fitting in, does that mean your AS wiring has changed? Not at all.