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« on: September 18, 2015, 03:17:24 AM »
Ok apologies for taking a while to get round to answering your question Uwe.
the short answer is that there is no clear dividing line between Aspergers and Autism. the newest version of DSM (the psychiatrist's diagnosis manual ) states that Aspergers is no longer a separate condition , that it is now high functioning autism.
They both revolve around difficulties with making sense of the world, but with lower functioning autism that relates to sight sound and touch, whereas with Aspergers they struggle to understand more complex social constructs such as emotions or sarcasm
the problem is that Autism research is a fiendishly tricky thing, teasing apart skeins of different symptoms such as ADHD, OCD, PDA, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, body dysmorphia and obsessional behavior (trains, people, numbers) and trying to understand whether they are symptoms of ASD or separate conditions that are co-morbid with ASD. All of these conditions occur within the neurotypical community although in ASD patients they are more common, more intense and more likely to cluster in the same individual.
Hence the current definition of ASD: Autistic Spectrum Disorder the idea that we are all autistic to some degree, with mild dyslexia, social awkwardness or OCD at one end , Aspergers a quarter of the way down and fully locked in, non verbal, rocking, twitching Autistic at the other end.
So to answer your question in laymans terms, an Aspie (not derogatory that is how they describe themselves) is someone with ASD symptoms but enough verbal and comprehensive skills to often pass for neurotypical. in fact one of the problems with working with them is often their verbal skills so high as to give you a wrong impression about how much they are actually understanding their social milieu, and one of the theories about the male/female discrepancies in numbers is that female social aptitude means that many undiagnosed aspies are able to hide their difficulties
A good way of getting your head around it is popular characters, Rain man was Autistic, Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory is Aspergers (so much so that I wince when I watch it, so much of the humor is based around laughing at his disability)
I will caveat that I have only been working with ASD for 4 years during which i have encountered probably a 100 kids with autism so I am by no means an expert.
My previous assertion that Aspergers is a separate condition is based on my observations that the term " typical Aspie behavior"is often used whereas one of the defining characteristics of regular autism is that there is no typical autistic behavior, in fact one of our headmistress' favorite quotes is " once you know one child with autism... you know one child with autism"
Also, literally in the week after the draft DSM definition of ASD ,a study was published where a trial of a blood test for autism had a 70% accuracy, but when those with a previous Asperger's definition were removed from the figures the accuracy jumped to 97% implying that there is chemically something different going on
hope that helps