Is there a difference between AS and HFA? thought they were

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I thought AS was just HFA, but being lead to believe there might be a difference between them. Is there/what are the differences?

The diagnostic difference today is that AS requires no delay in language development, while this doesn't prevent an HFA diagnosis. AS is generally associated with a better developmental prognosis, but generally in studies they're treated equally, since there's no real clinical difference when language has been aquired.

Thanks

HFA and LFA aren’t "official" terms.

Some people associate HFA with AS; others associate it with those who have autistic disorder (Kanner's autism, classic autism etcetera), but are in the "lucky" 30 percent who have a "normal" IQ (>70). The latter is erroneous for a multitude of reasons; the former is quite accurate.

It's autistic disorder or Asperger's disorder.

ORIGINALLY at least....

AS was those that had an average or higher IQ, no clinically significant disability besides social, were autodidactic, had a larger vocabulary, etc...., no developmental delays, before 3.

Of course, the restrictions on ASD were lifted so, in theory, a person with ASD can meet all the AS criteria and, conversely, a person with AS could be diagnosed as having ASD.

There is a rumor, that they are even thining of getting rid of the AS diagnosis. That would be contrary to most historical events, etc... but I guess they might. It isn't because the AS diagnosis has a problem, but because ASD was ade broader, and they are more laxed on AS requirements, so the two have almost become the same.

Steve

Sorry to ask this, but...

AS = Aspergers Syndrome

ASD = ?????

have heard references to both, slao thought they were the same. Sorry my knowledge is very limited.

For a big part, AS was added due to many people not meeting the criteria for autistic disorder but they still had a marked/severe impairment in social functioning and the narrow/obsessive interests.

ASD is autism spectrum disorder, which is a group of pervasive development disorders that are loosely related due to symptoms: Asperger's, autistic disorder, Rett's disorder and childhood disintegrative disorder.

I had a delay in talking, but when I did start talking I did it all at once, like just magically knew how or something. At least that's what my mom says, I can barely remember a damn thing before 12.
Lag in speech but high IQ, where does that put me?

Anie,

This is the current "official" criteria for the aforementioned disorders:

DSM-IV-TR Criteria for ASD

This one is a case of Kanner's Syndrome. I had very similar pre-occupations as a kid with trains and cars.

Those with Asperger's can have the same persistent preoccupation with parts of objects (it's in the DSM-IV-TR criteria).

(Kanner's autism and classic autism are synonymous with autistic disorder.)

Kanner and Asperger did not study two separate groups of people in terms of the traits they had. Some of Asperger's patients had speech delays earlier in life, and all of them spoke (his were older than Kanner's in general). Some of Kanner's patients did not have any speech delay at all and all but one of them spoke. All of both of their patients were said to be at least average intelligence if not more so. Both called their patients autistic. All of both sets of patients would be considered high-functioning by modern standards, at the age when they were being studied. There was a whole lot of overlap in traits between the two groups of people.

Kanner's version of autism got recognized first. Then later the category became expanded so that people who never spoke, and people with intellectual disabilities, were allowed into the category. There was a lot of controversy for a long time about where autism ended and childhood psychosis and intellectual disabilities began, and the boundaries were debated and shifted for a long time. (Keep in mind that in the fifties and sixties there were dozens of categories of 'childhood psychosis', autism being one of the few that's endured.) By the late seventies or early eighties (can't remember what the date of publication was of the book I am remembering, which was a professional anthology about autism) "Kanner's" autism was in some circles synonymous with "higher functioning" whereas "autistic PDD" was what they considered to have been "added later" to the definition, and was what most people meant by "lower functioning". But autism in general had become equated in people's minds with a lot of people who were very different (superficially at least) from the people Kanner actually studied.

In the early eighties, with the definition so confused, Lorna Wing resurrected Asperger's work and suggested using the term "Asperger's syndrome" to refer to a specific group of autistic people. That was eventually accepted into the official manuals by 1994. (Keep in mind autism was not even in the DSM until 1980.) Many of the traits in the official manual (such as lack of speech delay) do not correspond to Asperger's actual patients, and some of them correspond to some of Kanner's actual patients.

So no, it's not really "Asperger's patients had Asperger syndrome and Kanner's patients had Kanner syndrome". Both of them studied autistic people, called them autistic people (because they'd been exposed to the same literature that the word "autism" came from), and studied people with fairly similar traits, that they just happened to focus on different aspects of and with different biases.