Due to the substantial number of overlapping similarities between Asperger’s Syndrome and Autism, it is very easy to confuse one with the other. Classical autism has delayed language development, and most have mental retardation (learning disability). Asperger’s syndrome is a mild form of autism and generally manifests without extreme mental disabilities – their IQs are typically in the normal to the very superior range. They are usually educated in the mainstream, but many require special education services.
There is no history of language delay, but still shows characteristic impairments in reciprocal social interaction – there is a dissociation between cognitive and social skills.
AS subjects display age-specific or earlier verbal development, meticulous speech ability, a higher desire for social reciprocation, may learn to read at an early age, and have supreme imagination compared to ASD patients. On a cognitive level, AS subjects are more perceptive, and they possess superior verbal performance and visual-spatial ability compared to ASD patients.
AS patients often demonstrate high verbal IQ and strong grammatical skills, and they often outperform others in fluid reasoning, although they are reported to show a delayed reaction time with poor performance IQ, specifically in symbol coding and processing speed. What will differ greatly will be the person’s area of talent, visual or nonvisual modes of thinking, and severity of anxiety and oversensitivity to sensory input.
AS is more common than classical autism. Epidemiological surveys report that about 4 out of every 10,000 children are autistic, whereas about 68 out of 10,000 children are diagnosed with AS.
Asperger’s children may not be identified as such until they start having social problems at age eight or nine. They are the children who are “little professors” at four and five, but later become lonely, with few friends. Adults with Asperger’s run the gamut from brilliant scientists to unhappy loners on the fringes of society.
With adolescence, the social and academic worlds become more complex, and there is the expectation that the child should be more independent and self-reliant. Previously, social play was more action than conversation, friendships were transitory and social games relatively simple. In adolescence, friendships are based on more complex interpersonal needs rather than practical needs, someone to confide in rather than play ball with.
Instead of one teacher for the whole year, where they develop a working relationship, different teachers may have different methods of assessment. Knowledge of history is no longer remembering dates and facts, but organizing a coherent essay. English requires abilities with characterization and to ‘read between the lines’. Group projects may be difficult as the AS pupil may not assimilate into a working group of students
The symptoms and signs of AS are more conspicuous at times of stress and change, and the teen years have major changes in expectations and circumstances.
Brain studies demonstrate that the social deficits in autism and Asperger’s are highly correlated with measurable biological differences. But the question remains: When does a difference in the size of a certain brain region become an abnormality, instead of just a normal variation? If one selected 100 people at random from a large corporation or at an airport and scanned their brains, one would find a range of differences in the size and activation level of their amygdala (the most affected part of the brain in autism). Brain scan results from this normal cross-section of the public could likely be closely correlated with tests that evaluate sociability and social skills. Conducting this experiment on the general public would show that normal brain variation could be measured.
Furthermore, people tend to choose careers that they are good at, and it is predicted that there would be a high correlation between a person’s job and the characteristics of the amygdala. Out of the 100 hypothetical people from a large corporation whose brains were scanned, the technical people in the computer department would probably show less activation in their amygdalas compared to the highly social salesman in the marketing department.
Many accomplished families in Silicon Valley have children with autism. This mysterious rise in diagnosis was not restricted to Silicon Valley – it was happening all over the world.
Asperger’s syndrome is on a continuum with the normal. Traits associated with severe involvement are observed in mild forms in many so-called neurotypical people. One often sees Asperger-like traits in family members of people with autism: a father who is a computer programmer with poor social skills, an eccentric uncle, and other family members with depression or anxiety. Often, these “shadow syndromes” acquire no specific label or diagnosis.
Temple Grandin noticed how many parents at autistic conferences were gifted in technical fields. “I started to think of autistic traits as being on a continuum. The more traits you had on both sides, the more you concentrated the genetics. Having a little bit of the traits gave you an advantage, but if you had too much, you ended up with very severe autism.” She warned that efforts to eradicate autism from the gene pool could put humankind’s future at risk by purging the same qualities that had advanced culture, science, and technological innovation for millennia.
The whole definition of the term “neurological disorder” implies that something is going wrong in the brain. However, there is a growing recognition of the fact that when it comes to the processes in our brain, “going wrong” does not necessarily mean “going bad”. Our brain is too complicated a mechanism to be interpreted in simplistic terms. Some neurological disorders produce a peculiar state of mind often associated with high artistic and scientific achievements.
Some of the listed mental disorders in the DSM are the names of personality traits. At what point, after all, does a variation in personality become a true neurological disorder, such as severe depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, anxiety, or obsessive-compulsive disorder? When does moody become manic depressive? When does feeling blue become depression? When does being fussy about cleanliness slip over into obsessive-compulsive disorder? When does autism turn into Asperger’s, and when is Asperger’s mild enough to be called something like “computer nerd”?
What, after all, is normality? Given that there is an enormous range of social behaviour with many degrees of adaptation and success or failure in the normal population, where does normality end and abnormality begin? Should one instead talk about normal and abnormal shading into each other? To put it another way, should one look at Asperger’s syndrome as a normal personality variant?
The difficulty in understanding and acknowledging autism, primarily high-functioning autism or Asperger’s Syndrome, by the medical, psychological, and psychiatric community, can lead to misdiagnosis and even failure to provide the services needed for students.
