May I ask what the difference is between 'high functioning autistic' and 'high functioning ASD'

[Twiglett]

I think I assumed that they were part of the same continuum towards the NT side and severely autistic at the other.

But I think I might have been mistaken and think I'd like to understand it better .. if there is an easy answer that is

that should read "I think I assumed that they were part of the same continuum with high-functioning ASD towards the NT side and severely autistic at the other.

Well I thought it was the same thing. ASD stands for autistic spectrum disorder.

and I thought it was Asperger Syndrome .. which will be where my confusion lies I suppose

I think Aspergers is AS. I'd say ASD is Austistic Spectrum Disorder - ie anywhere along the spectrum

so is high-functioning autism related in any way to Aspergers Syndrome .. or are they two separate things

I always read AS initially as Ankylosing Spondilitis which will be my personal blindness

The main difference between AS and High Functioning Autism is that usually with AS there has been no significant language delay.

I don't think there is any diagnostic agreement about the terms. Aspergers tends to be used as short hand for higher functioning autism. Most experts draw their own distinction if any between HFA and AS. The prof who dx'd my DS believes that the severity of the autism is a separate issue from the underlying intelligence. A person could be highly intelligent but severely autistic and conversely, severely retarded but only mildly autistic - as speech and social interaction are high order functions that require underlying intelligence. I don't think this will have cleared any confusion

Donna Williams wrote about that too moira, it makes great reading, but it certainly wouldn't help with the complexities of asd...

I have always thought Aspergers as being different from autism, autism involving a triad of impairments.... language being one of them... AS imo doesn't seem to involve the language delay/disorders... but I am new to all this and it is all about as clear as mud atm.

My ds has some speech, and some 'islands of ability' with colours, shapes and numbers. But becuase all his speech is linked with his interests, and he didn't speak until a few months ago, he has been given a diagnosis of autism. He is 3 years old. The psych and paediatrician dx'ed him as autism, rather than hfa or asd. The main reason being that in social interaction, and social imagination he is highly impaired. They said he presented in a unique manner, and it would be interesting to see how he develops.
I personally think he has alot of extreme sensory issues, which trouble him alot. He also has alot of ritualistic behaviour.
I don't really understand the difference.
No use at all am I?

Agree with moira's paed and I quite like the term 'low communicating' for people commonly called severely autistic for that reason. It's very very difficult to teach someone severely autistic but that doesn't meant they're unintelligent (even if they've been diagnosed with severe learning difficulties which they may well have been- it's about teachability - not intelligence).

I tend to use HFA for someone who is conversationally verbal but is instantly recognisable as being spectrummy (so obvious language difficulties remain etc) , whereas I tend to think of AS as being less easy to spot. But diagnostically it's really about age of developing speech.

The other defintion of HFA versus low functioning is to do with IQ (but again IQ is about being able to measure something - doesn't necessarily reflect what's going on inside).

Categorisation in autism has allways troubled me.

Did a lot of work with a guy. labeled "low comunicating" no meaningful independant use of language, though he exibited echolalia, severe learning diss (they said), very low IQ (so all the tests said) etc etc.

He could define "challenging behaviour" until you understood and respected him.

He was actually very bright, he seemed to understand everything you told him, it was his ability to use it for himself that simply wasn't there.

Hmmm yes this is what my PhD is on.

Actually even severely autistic children (and adults- but my work is on children) can communicate far better than the diagnosis would predict.

But they need the right environment, and the right setting and need to be assessed with people who know them well.

Which isn't to diminish the very obvious major difficulties they have. But which is to say that they shouldn't be written off.

DS1 is currently being assessed to see whether he's suitable to take part in a program that will aim to teach him to read (with understanding), to provide a framework to learn sentence structure and grammar and to write - both with a pen and a keyboard. It's a year long course.

I hope he's suitable- he needs a certain level of compliance. I think he'll be OK with that. ABA means he has quite good focus at a table now.

I haven't got a clue and I've GOT 2 of the beggers! all this trying to separate people with autism into little subcategories really puzzles me. What I see is that it is a wide range of behaviours that to some degree are present in all of us but in some people are SO strong that the person is unable to function in the 'normal' way and we call it autism. Every person with asd is unique and it is the 'professionals' who seem to need to lump them into groups for some reason.

my ds has High functioning autism and the psychiatrist told me it was all the same now as aspergers

THere is a bit of a move against that now hecate (very recently). Which is good to see. Assuming ASD has one cause, one appropriate therapy, one way of thinking [e.g. 'autistic people are visual thinkers' No. some autistic people are visual thinkers] is not remotely helpful.

Really yurt? That's good. I must say that as soon as I hear the words "Autistic people are/do/like...." I turn on my internal radio and drown them out

I get knocked down, I get back up again, you're never gonna keep me down I get knocked down.....dadadada dadadadadada....hmmmm? sorry did you say something?

Professionals. pah. They make me piss myself.

Tony Attwood's response to this question is that "the only difference between Asperger's and Higher Functioning Autism is in the spelling", if I remember correctly!
The criteria for AS is that the child must have
at least average or above average intelligence, and should not have had any speech delay, although I think this latter criteria is now a matter of debate.

I think it is good to have this discussion, not that I am concerned about my ds getting a dx, I just want him to get the support he needs... I sometimes wonder if Autism exists, in the sense that it is something that can be easily defined... in the way that some people might wonder if al quiada exists.

I know my ds is not NT, he is the odd one out at nursery... I just hope that professionals can be flexible about their expectations of children with SN... that they won't have low expectations of them. (daydreamer emoticon required?)

Our (latest) consultant seemed to think one of the bugbears is that very image of a "continuum" - being as it is a linear model: so you are made to place enormously differing presentations, with chalk-&-cheese strengths & weaknesses, somewhere along a single line.

He suggested, instead, three lines radiating out from central point (bit like the lines dividing a circle in thirds) - each line representing one of the "triad" - which he labelled as "rigid thinking", "language" and "social understanding". (The "rigid thinking" being his formula for imaginative issues, which I thought was a good approach - deals well with that tricky area of the intensely vivid BUT single-track, uncollaborative imagination.)

You can then map individual bits of the presentation separately. It gave us a much more useful picture of ds than the other models (including the Olympic circles idea, which I just found bewildering).

He said this is how autism research conceived the field back in the 1960s, & it was coming full circle (in his view). So I'm offering it as an alternative.

When we went to Bibic we were told the difference between the 2 is that children with Aspergers want to be like everyone else, socialise etc and children with HFA don't.

I don't really agree with BIBIC there although the idea of lack of interest in being social is a common one. And of course it will be true in individual cases. I think that idea is slowly being challenged though. It's mentioned less in the literature now and the idea that there are big sensory and movement problems which can interfere to affect social interaction (but not necessarily the wish to interact) is gaining some ground. A number of severely autistic individuals have now written of their desire to take part and interact but their inability to do so because of problems initiating movement (and therefore interaction) etc.

Roz Blackburn is an example of someone who does seem to say she has no wish to be like anyone else. Although I doubt she'd call herself high functioning really -- I think she terms herself severely autistic.

I'm not sure of it as a general rule though.

oh Lucy Blackman said something interesting about this , She;s non-verbal (pretty much) severely autistic. She said:

"It may be that the social deficits which are the cornerstone of an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis tell us far more about the person who made them markers for such a diagnosis than about the child whom he observed. I realise that social life and affection are essential for being human but I still wonder whether the "Me" factor is properly understood. That is, the whole testing procedure is somehow actually constructed on whether the tester observed the person to socialise in a way the tester understood to be socialisation.....As long as we are told that communication and social factors are the markers for autism, there will be an uneven response in tackling the discomfort and disorientation which may predate these peculiarities.'

So she's saying that the lack of socialisation arises because of the big sensory/perceptual processing problems - that prevents interaction and socialisation and comes first. The wish is there, but the ability isn't.

Had to read that paragraph several times when I first came across it (in Doug Biklen's book- Autism and the Myth of the Person Alone) as I thought it was so interesting.