Do any other Aspies agree with me?

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I feel VERY strongly that Asperger's and Autism should remain separate in the DSM and I am very much opposed to the proposal to lump them together. I understand that Autism and Asperger's have many similarities and that speech development is one of the few differences between them, but I believe that that difference alone is reason enough to keep them separate. Asperger's is never so severe that people never learn to speak. In fact, most Aspies have strong verbal skills and advanced vocabularies. But, autism CAN be so severe that those on the low end of the spectrum might never learn to speak. Therefore, it is simply illogical and unproductive to put them in the same category.

Well it's like schizoaffective and schizophrenic are the same thing, it's just a matter of degrees.

Sure apes and chimps are very different, but there's enough common ground to be part of the same family.....

I can see your point. I have mild AS, and I have some NTs traits, and I am able to pass off as NT to other people. I don't flap my hands about or do anything else that makes people know that there is something wrong.

I don't like to consider myself as Autistic either, although AS is on the Autism spectrum. I think this might be because I was never called Autistic by my parents or any doctors - I was always called a child with AS, a teenager with AS, and now I just call myself an Aspie.

It's like with viruses. There are some viruses that come mild, and you can still get out of bed and do things and go out with just a little sniffle, and doesn't really affect you too much. But other viruses can come out worse, resulting in difficulties getting out of bed and extremely high temperature or extreme thirst or hunger. Obviously not everyone gets these same symptoms but they still feel this ill when they come down with something rough. Sometimes how colds and flus affect you can depend on the person aswell, but I'm just generally speaking here. If you've got a ''high-functioning sniffle'', you wouldn't consider yourself being ''really ill''. Same as me with my AS - I don't consider it being ''really Autistic''. I might say ''mildly Autistic'' or ''learning disability'', but generally I just say ''Aspie'' or just AS.

The reason that Asperger's Syndrome is defined by never having a speech delay and that people who have Asperger's are considered to have strong verbal skills (this is not always true) is because the criteria draws a line between people who can possibly have a speech delay and people who do not. This does not mean that everyone diagnosed with autistic disorder has a speech delay (they can fit the criteria in other ways) nor does it mean that no one diagnosed with autistic disorder has strong verbal skills.

The research linked from the DSM-V page for autistic spectrum disorder describes the many ways in which people diagnosed with AS actually fit the criteria for autistic disorder, and many researchers and clinicians have pointed out that it is fairly difficult to distinguish someone diagnosed with autistic disorder and described as high functioning and someone diagnosed with AS.

Also:

is a direct statement about emotion. I point this out because in another thread you made a big deal about others being too emotionally invested in "autism" to be objective. It seems that you, too, may be too emotional about this topic to be properly objective. This does not mean your arguments are wrong (although I disagree with them completely), but suggests a double standard.

Speech development is not the only or even primary indicator of autistic severity. As for not making sense to put the full spectrum into one category - they're not. There's actually a dimensional criteria to assess severity for different symptoms (social and repetitive behaviors) so someone who is mild will be assessed as mild and someone who is severe will be assessed as severe.

Autistic people also experience difficulties with cognitive empathy - thus reading social cues such as body language, facial expression, or tone of voice. Most also experience sensory sensitivities that can be quite severe independent of whether they spoke in complete sentences before three years of age or not. The symptoms cover far more than speech. Also, not having speech does not mean an inability to communicate, nor does having speech mean that one is exceptionally good at communication.

Autism would not nearly be the only condition to represent a wide variety of severity levels. For comparison, cerebral palsy covers everything from people who can walk and have relatively mild symptoms compared to someone who is completely unable to move or speak.

But, you haven't demonstrated why it's illogical or unproductive to put them in the same category. You simply argued that the speech delay distinction is all-encompassing, and then asserted that because of this it is illogical to put them in the same category. What is the logic here? Why take a single trait and use it to define the difference?

Incidentally, another poster here has argued persuasively that there are tendencies toward differences between people rigorously diagnosed as AS vs those rigorously diagnosed with autistic disorder. I don't recall that she's argued that this is a reason for the spectrum to remain three or four separate diagnoses in the DSM-V, but she does have more information than many.

I don't agree with you. I think that all forms of autism should be lumped together, and each autistic person should be treated as an individual according to his or her individual strengths and weaknesses. I understand that this is an ideal, but continuing to separate Asperger's and autism will not advance us towards this ideal.

In terms of language, I would argue that autistic language development and usage are simply different from normal language development and usage. Many people with AS exhibit differences in language usage in childhood and adulthood, and many people with AS exhibited differences in language development during childhood.

For example, I spoke mostly in the form of recitation and echolalia as a child, up until the age of 7 or 8. That was when I started to develop spontaneous spoken language. I spoke much less than normal children and not at all outside the home. But I could speak. In early childhood, I could sound words with my mouth as I remembered or heard them sounded by someone else. I didn't know what I was talking about! In later childhood, I could retrieve words from my memory and string them together into sentences in my mind before or at the same time that I sounded them with my mouth. I knew what I was talking about! Since then, I have developed strong verbal skills with an advanced vocabulary, but my writing is much better than my speech.

It seems to me that language development and usage would naturally vary amongst autistic people.

We've had much debate already on the subject here. While I argued that an all-in-one diagnosis (ASD) might setback proper distinction between sub-categories of ASDs, thus impeding research and practical applications, reading your post indicates that stereotypes might confuse what differentiates AS from autism (or any contrived categories). Putting all ASDs together some notation would be needed to indicate severity and subtype, with clear-cut definitions.

You could just as easily split the spectrum by any other trait. Maybe whether or not they have any delay in motor skills, or whether they are sociable or aloof, or whether they insist on routines or not - each of those splits would show significant differences. But would they be useful splits?

I think to show a valid distinction, you'd need to demonstrate that the two groups differ in some way that isn't a tautology - ie for language delay, they'd have to differ on non-language measures. Or you'd need to show that the two groups respond to different treatments. Or that they belong to 'clusters', a statistical measure indicating that certain groups of individuals have more in common with each other than with members of the other groups.

None of those have been demonstrated for dividing on the basis of early language delay. (Ongoing language delay might be a different matter, though.) And currently we haven't found good predictors of which kinds of autistics benefit most from which treatments - all we've found is that higher functioning individuals tend to be higher functioning on follow-up than lower functioning individuals when both are given the same treatment.

The human race is diverse and this diversity is what makes the species so strong. In the grand scheme of things, what label is applied to this collection of (likely unrelated) mental differences is really a non issue.

That is a good analogy.

You could just as easily split the spectrum by any other trait. Maybe whether or not they have any delay in motor skills, or whether they are sociable or aloof, or whether they insist on routines or not - each of those splits would show significant differences. But would they be useful splits? [quote]

Yes, if there are other traits by which to divide the spectrum, I am certainly open to that possibility. By the way, autistics are generally more severely affected than Aspies in all those traits you mentioned, which is all the more reason to separate them. Asperger's has its own spectrum because it alone varies widely from mild to severe. So, there shouldn't be one autistic spectrum, but there should be two spectrums: The autism spectrum and the Asperger's spectrum.

Right. Until that doesn't work, because there are a lot of people out there who are like me and have traits indicative of what you would call both "spectrums."

For the sake of everyone's sanity, it's a good thing they're being merged. We don't need 30 different sets of diagnostic criteria to describe the same thing.

I am not an Aspie (I have classic autism), but I do agree that Aspergers Sydrome and Autistic Disorder (and PDDNOS) should remain separate. All should be acknowledged as Autism Spectrum Disorders, but still maintain their unique titles. I do not feel this way because of the reason you provided though. Autism is a spectrum, so I don't think it is wrong to lump people with mild Aspergers and low-functioning Autism together on the same SPECTRUM (that is the definition of spectrum after all). I feel this way because of the more HF crowd. While Aspergers and High-Functioning classic autism are very similar, there are also distinct differences (not just speech and/or other type of communication delay). I read a book entitled Asperger Syndrome that explained the many smaller differences between Aspergers and HF(classic)A. For me, whenever a difference was mentioned, I fit into the classic autism crowd. The differences are not HUGE, but there are enough of them to maintain a separate label, IMO.

That being said, I do not believe the labels should be separated to enforce division. I think diagnoses should be more like:
ASD: Autism
ASD: Aspergers
ASD: PDDNOS

We are still on the spectrum, but I think knowing where one falls EXACTLY on the spectrum can be helpful in understanding where one's behaviours, quirks, thoughts, etc come from.

I know some people will probably reply that many people are giving the wrong label anyway. Indeed this is true (I was first diagnosed with Aspergers before being properly diagnosed with Autism), but I still maintain my position on the matter. I think psychs should be more careful in diagnosing people with labels to ensure that they are given the proper diagnosis (ie. just because a person is an adult, does not mean psychs should not give them a classic autism diagnosis--it CAN be missed just like Aspergers, particularly in people who are in there 20s and 30s and older today).

I like the merge because:

1) Too many people are being diagnosed with AS with extremely mild symptoms and it's being misdiagnosed/overdiagnosed.

2) I want this Asperger superiority complex to stop amongst those that feel it's a gift and don't want to be grouped with he severe end of the spectrum.

3) Asperger's should not be a label to make someone feel better. It might get renamed in social communication disorder. So you can call yourselves 'SCD' or 'scuds'. Actually scuds sounds cool. How about scids? skids? See that's cool too.

4)It may eventually change the perception the public has about autism. Too many people still hold the 50 year old view that autism is always severe.

5) I don't really have a fifth reason but I already call myself autistic so when the merge happens I remain unaffected.

This is a scud





The weird thing is how autistic was originally all about the "high functioning" kids, and then it was expanded to include many children diagnosed with childhood schizophrenia who appeared to be much more severe, and now it's like "Autism has always been primarily about the most severely effected." People still read Kanner's case studies and then insist that the children are all "LFA" even though they would clearly not be described that way.

I know what a scud is. Scud missiles are cool.

Recently someone gave me a link about another disorder, first studied in 1937, similar to autism but the children recovered by 6 or 7 years. And it wasn't Lauder Kleffner syndrome.
I'll look the link up.