Asperger's Syndrome

Moonbear

And now we return this thread to real science. Happeh, you really should read more about Asperger's if you have gotten the impression that diet will cure it.

Zooby, I myself am not clear on what the distinction is between high-functioning autism and Asperger syndrome. I'm under the impression the latter is a subset of the former, but am not clear what the diagnostic criteria would be to determine it's Asperger syndrome specifically.

Recently I met someone who one might wonder if he has Asperger's (or some other high functioning autism type disorder). I don't know if he really did or not, but this is more than just your typical geek or nerd (we were at a party full of scientists, so plenty of geeky/nerdy types present, and he still stood out as even more extreme). When they talk about lack of social skills, we're not talking about someone who just prefers to sit by themself in the corner because they are bored with the conversation or are somewhat introverted, but someone who really doesn't detect the nuances of conversation. He quickly became flustered and didn't quite "get" the jokes being told because he took things totally literally. It's also not just not making eye contact (I know a lot of people uncomfortable looking someone in the eyes, but that's not Asperger's), but that they almost appear to wish they were a turtle that could crawl back into a shell when someone talks to them; they look down, turn away, you may even notice their shoulders hunch, almost like they are cringing away from the conversation rather than just standing with their gaze directed to the floor as a person who is just shy might do.

But, keep in mind with any psychological/psychiatric disorder that having a single symptom does not mean you have the disorder. You always need to consider the full complement of symptoms someone exhibits.

Edit: Ah, here's a site that answers a lot of questions. http://www.aspergers.com/

The diagnostic criteria (DSM-IV) are listed there too.

zoobyshoe

"Rainman" is high functioning autism.
According to this book, people with Aspergers find eye contact to be an overwhelmingly intense experience. One guy described it as being like staring into bright car headlights. They don't like to look directly into peoples eyes because they can no longer listen properly to what they are saying if they do. In other words, the sheer visual experience of two eyes looking at them is too intense for them to do that and talk at the same time. This is quite distinct from someone who avoids looking people in the eye from fear of their potentially critical judgements, as from "shyness" or "low self esteem". Asperger's people aren't the least bit afraid of being looked at and mentally judged, it is the intensity of the visual experience of other people's gaze that brings them to a standstill.

I believe the same is true of autistic people, who experience some normal everyday things at a level of intensity that is painfull.

This latter doesn't sound like Asperger's. Asperger's people don't present as "shy", despite the lack of eye contact. Aspergers people are much more likely to approach total strangers and bring their favorite subject up out of the blue, then talk about it non-stop.

What they would avoid at a social gathering is "group" discussions, because the more people there are, the less and less able they would be to talk non-stop about their favorite subject uninterrupted. Asperger's people are not good conversationalists but are enthusiastic monologists.

As for not getting jokes; people with Asperger's are baffled by certain kinds of jokes, but they aren't at all humorless. They love specific kinds of humor, and are particularly attracted to word-play, and exaggerated comic characters like you'd find in a Mike Meyer's Austin Powers movie.
Absolutely. A single feature means nothing at all. Even having all the features means nothing if they aren't the right quality.

Math Is Hard

Wired ran an interesting article about Aspergers a few years back: The Geek Syndrome.
I remember this article because I took the test that came with it and scored higher than I was expecting. It looks like the online test is broken but you can still score it manually.

ron damon

normal people are sickening

Zantra

aspergers- the ugly brother to autism. It's only in the last few years, to my knowledge, that they've really made progress in identifying aspergers. Before that many as patients were being misdiagnosed as high functioning autistics- as Moonbear pointed out. Oh and Moonbear, since you were asking about diagnostic criteria, here's a pathology:

http://www.aspergers.com/aspbiol.htm

Moonbear

I came across that article fairly recently, so decided to dig into the literature at the time to see if it held up to scrutiny. Apparently, it hasn't. IIRC, more recent studies have come to the conclusion that it's just that physicians are more aware of the syndrome, so the apparent increases in Aspergers in that area are just better and earlier diagnosis.

Zooby, when I said I thought someone with Aspergers looked like someone wishing they could crawl into a shell, I didn't intend to imply shyness. Actually, I think that fits reasonably well with your clarification of eye contact being too intense to the point of being overwhelming. Your analogy of feeling like they are caught in very bright lights makes sense with what I'm picturing in my mind (even if I'm not explaining that picture well). If you've ever been caught in someone's hi-beam headlights while out walking, you know how you feel like absolutely cringing away from it because it's almost painful. The thing is, they'll keep talking, but really go out of their way to make eye contact.

But, I don't know if the person I met would really meet diagnostic criteria for Aspergers, he might have just been socially inept, but his behaviors did seem very different from anything I've ever seen in people who are shy or introverted, or bad conversationalists, etc.

fileen

my adopted brother has A.S. he is young and has a really hard time making friends. he is also incredibly smart and has an amazing memory. he doesnt understand jokes. he reminds me of a computer. brilliant but frustrating. our family is use to him, we have no troubles, but he doesnt know how to act in social situations. he doesnt understand personal space. he is caring and loving and seeks relationshis, he just doesnt know how. he has an issue with sound. music seems to almost put him in a trance, and when he isnt thinking about it he makes repetitive sounds without realizing he does it. I dont know much about A.S. but it is not something to be cured with diet. Im slightly offended by the suggestion. he struggles with it. he will all his life. my mother chose to homeschool him because children would beat up on him at school and teachers were cold towards him suggesting he deserved it. yelling at him, trying to force him into knowing, but he cant. my brother has a hard time being accepted for who he is. again I dont know much about it, but I do know that he can not learn it. he has no capacity to do so, and he tries desperately. my brother makes eye contact with me, though I cant say how he is with strangers. he doesnt sit still for long, or do anything for long if it is simple to him and he can do it easily, but his determination is unmatched. he has poor coordination, but when he sets out to do something he will try until he succeeds or physically cannot try any more. he will do great things in life. it is the people who mock his disability who hold him back. if you would like to learn more let me know and I can access my mothers information...she has books and books on the subject

Moonbear

That is something I've heard about kids with Aspergers. They so badly want to make friends, and misunderstand so many social cues, that they become victims of bullying very easily. When the other kids tell them to do something to make a fool of them, they do it because they think it will make the other kids like them. That part of it makes me very sad, just knowing that a child is desperate to make friends and just doesn't know how and can't, my heart breaks for them. Thank you for sharing about your brother so we can all understand other children with the syndrome a little better.

hypnagogue

"Rainman" (Kim Peek) is an autistic savant. However, one needn't be a savant in order to be a high functioning autistic.

I haven't done extensive reading on this topic, but I have some insight since my brother is a high functioning autistic. If you were to meet my brother, you'd be able to tell he isn't a cognitively normal individual pretty quickly. He's shy around strangers, but if you can engage him in conversation you find pretty quickly that he has a limited vocabulary and difficulty stringing together sentences. He does OK with smaller and more basic sentences, but runs into trouble for longer ones or ones that convey more complex or subtle ideas. You can tell he's thinking about things and has an active, inquisitive mind, but he has a hard time expressing himself and understanding more complicated concepts, and as a result his view of the world is pretty naive and child-like (he's 17 now). His linguistic skills are far behind someone like Kim Peek, and he doesn't have any special savant skills either. I imagine he's much more heavily afflicted by autism than people who are only diagnosed with Asperger's. Besides the linguistic skills, he also has a strong propensity to get completely absorbed into various activities like watching movies, listening to music, or playing video games, and if he is interrupted during this time he can get rather upset or anxious.

He's been diagnosed as high functioning, though, because of where he stands relative to most other autistic children. I volunteered at an afterschool program that he attended with other autistic children from a span of about 8-10 years ago, so I've been able to see the difference firsthand. While his language skills are limited, he was still far ahead of most of the autistic children at the program. I might be biased, but it seemed to me that even compared to children at a comparable level, he came off as more 'normal' in terms of personality and speech vocalizations during conversation. Probably the biggest difference, though, is behavioral. If you were to observe my brother from a distance without talking to him, you wouldn't be able to tell that he wasn't a cognitively normal person. He doesn't engage in stereotyped or repetetive behaviors like hand-flapping or otherwise abnormal movements and physical behaviors, and in general is on a pretty even keel emotionally. These factors contributed to his being able to work very well in the applied behavioral analysis sessions they administered to the autistic children, which is where I imagine he earned the label of 'high functioning.' He might be able to hold down a low end job someday, which is indicative of his high functioning character. However, I don't think it's by any means a given that he will be able to, which marks his case as more severe than Asperger's.

I find the thing about eye contact interesting, because in my brother's case he not only has no problems with it, but often seeks to establish it (at least for me and my parents). He doesn't seem to exhibit any gross sensory sensitivities in general, although he may have when he was younger. (He used to be terrified of the vacuum, and we think it was because of the noises it made, but nowadays he volunteers to vacuum himself.)

zoobyshoe

I've never heard of Kim Peek. I meant Rainman/Dustin Hoffman, a popular movie I figured Moonbear would know about, which accurately portrayed high functioning autism, (and also, incidently, savant-ism.)

Yes, "high functioning" has nothing in particular to do with those who are also savants.

I am not, to my own private satisfaction, convinced that Asperger's is really a form of autism. The resemblences strike me as superficial. To the extent they've found anything wrong with the brains of Asperger's people it seems all to be left hemishere lesions. With autistic people the main problem they find is an undersized cerebellum. All this kind of research has been spotty and inconclusive, though.

Has your brother ever had an MRI or CT scan, Hyp?

hypnagogue

Hoffman's character in Rainman is inspired by Kim Peek. (see the link)

I'm pretty sure he hasn't.

zoobyshoe

People with Asperger's are socially inept in a very specific way for a very specific reason, which is the lack of "theory of mind". The gaze thing is a separate problem, and isn't the cause or main feature of their social ineptitude.

The lack of "theory of mind" leads to them approaching total strangers with a kind of astonishing naivte. One book I read illustrated this with an incident where an Asperger's person walked up to an obese girl and said: "So, I see you're fat. What's it like to be fat?"

Bashe and Kirby list 10 consequences of this "mindblindness":

1. Insensitivity to other peope's feelings
2. Inability to take into account what other people know
3. Inability to negotiate friendships by reading and responding to intentons
4. Inability to read the listener's level of interest in one's speech
5. In ability to detect a speaker's intended meaning
6. Inability to anticipate what others might think of one's actions
7. Inability to understand misunderstandings
8. Inability to decieve or understand deceptions
9. Inability to understand the reasons behind people's actions
10. Inability to understand "unwritten rules" or conventions

-The Oasis Guide to Asperger Syndrome
p. 310

At Princeton, unsophisticated and socially unschooled Richard Feynman was invited to "high tea" many times. The first time he went he was asked if he wanted lemon or milk. "Both" he said, with no clue. "Surely, you must be jokng, Mr. Feynman!" the socialite woman who was pouring replied. Later, she says the same thing in connection with something else he's said. Suddenly, Feynman has an insight! She's telling him he has made a social blunder. That, he realizes, is what "Surely you must be jokng!" means: it's a hint, a clue: "You have made a social faux pas."

That is the kind of insight Asperger's people never have.

zoobyshoe

deseretnews.com | NASA scientists taking a peek at Utahn's brain
Address:http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,595103605,00.html

They are saying this guy has no separation between the hemispheres of his brain! Amazing!

Happeh

What you mean is that now, since you are all knowing, you will disregard anything that does not fit into your world view.

I would like to offer some advice to people here. It is common for educated people to become blinded by arrogance. They feel if someone does not speak as they do, the person cannot possibly have anything of importance to say. They feel that if the person says something that they have not heard of, the person is a waste of time.

These arrogant individuals commonly express their arrogance by rudely pretending people do not exist and completely ignoring them

Educated people are of the mind that things must have an extremely complex explanation that only someone qualified such as themselves can understand. If the explanation is simple, they refuse to accept it. Anyone can understand simple. How will their ego deal with that situation? Instead of being an arrogant elitists, they are just like regular people understanding something simple.

If you read Zooby shoes list of 10 things commonly associated with Aspergers, you see a very obvious thing. If you are able to see the obvious. If you are arrogant and closeminded, and you believe that Aspergers is some problem that people have because an expert told you so, you will never bother to trust your own god given brain and look for the answer yourself.

When I look at Zooby's list, I see the description of an honest person. And somehow, some bozo has convinced people that honesty is a disease and the honest person is sick.

1. Insensitivity to other peope's feelings

Translation - Will not lie to make other people feel good

2. Inability to take into account what other people know

Translation - refusal to accept the ignorant statements of others so they feel good.

3. Inability to negotiate friendships by reading and responding to intentons

Translation - Does not tell lies that other people want them too in order to form relationships.

4. Inability to read the listener's level of interest in one's speech

Translations - refuses to let an ignorant person get away without hearing what they need to. Like me forcing reality on you. Motivated by caring about the health of other human beings.

5. In ability to detect a speaker's intended meaning

Translation - Refuses to be hurt when ugly people are abusive to them. Your hidden meaning in "And now we return to science" is "get out of here bozo". Instead of rewarding the ugly person with the negative reaction they want, the person smiles and pretends he doesn't know what the ugly person's intentions are.

6. Inability to anticipate what others might think of one's actions

Translation - Does what is right, no matter who cries about it

7. Inability to understand misunderstandings

Translation - Refusal to be dragged into pointless recriminations.

8. Inability to decieve or understand deceptions

Translation - Refusal to be an agent of evil. Refusing to lie or be deceitful. Refusing to understand deception so as to remain uncontaminated by evil.

9. Inability to understand the reasons behind people's actions

Translation - Uninterested in listening to people's excuses

10. Inability to understand "unwritten rules" or conventions

Translation - Who says they don't understand?

If I could sum up where you are wrong simply and directly?

You think Aspergers people are losers or sick or problem people who do not function in society. What if Aspergers people are so superior that contact with normal people is painful for them? What if they feign all of those 10 "problems" so they avoid normal people and therefore avoid the pain induced by unaware normal people?

You really oughta do something about that arrogance. Don't be misled by appearances. I could tell you a thing or two you never heard anywhere else on this planet.

Zantra

Ok the difference between an "honest" person and someone with AS is akin to the difference between psychopath's and sociopaths- psychopaths don't know the normal social rules-sociopaths know the rules but choose not to follow them. Likewise, someone with AS doesn't know the social norms, whereas an excessively honest person knows the rules and just chooses not to follow them. Similiar behaviors doesn't necessarily mean that the behaviors are normal- it depends on the context.

kaos

Aspergers is not as simple as being too honest or watever. Its simply that the person is unable to see others perspective in social situations.We do not make life difficult for them ,rather life is difficult for these people because of problems with social interactions. I think its safe to say u have never met ppl with aspergers, so stop postulating that nonsense happeh.

Delta

I agree.

I'm no expert, but after having autistic kids being pointed out to me, whether its aspergers or at the other end of the ASD scale, you begin to understand there is something different going on. One of the main things being that they seem to be in a world of their own.

Just by looking at their actions and their eyes it is not arrogance or having a higher opinion.

I'm still trying to find stuff on a close 3yr old friend of mine, who we are still not sure what they have. All I know is that a friend used to babysit her every weekday and when I turned up on the friday the little girl used to throw her arms in the air and scream with excitement everytime. The babysitting stopped for several months, and now when I see her its like she doesn't know who I am anymore more.

I was told it was because she's forgotten how to react. There are a few other things, such as an inability to express pain, a lack of sense of danger, her speech isn't as developed as it could be, easily distracted. Someone found something on the internet that discribed her but wasn't ASD. Although an initial diagnosis was aspergers, the research continues.