What is the difference between AS and HFA?

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I always wanted to know the answer to the question, i've researched about it and still clearly don't seem to understand the difference but also why is it so confusing that the not all physiologists would know the answer to that... They both are similar in so many ways?

Also I wondering... I was diagnosed of having autism when I was little but I never had any clue about it..... From what i've read on my previous school's annual review papers before i've left the school is that I have "Aspergers Syndrome" and I don't seem to agree with it because I didn't start talking until I was 3 and a half years old in complete sentence and I simply don't understand it if it is true or not....

I'm kinda wondering do I have High-Functioning Autism or do I have Aspergers Syndrome? and what is the difference between them?


superboyian.

There's very little difference. Most cases of Asperger's can also be diagnosed as Autism.

Anyway, the difference, by the diagnostic criteria, is that people with classic autism have at least one of these traits, and people with Asperger's do not:

Autistic Disorder also requires six traits; Asperger's, three (though in practice most people with Asperger's tend to have more like five to eight such traits).

There's no other difference required to bump you into the Autistic Disorder category.

Other things that will rule out Asperger's and put you into PDD-NOS (if you do not have one of the above traits; if you did you would already have gotten a diagnosis of Autism) are any "clinically significant delay in cognitive development or in the development of age-appropriate self help skills, adaptive behavior (other than in social interaction) and curiosity about the environment in childhood."

http://www.autreat.com/dsm4-autism.html
http://www.autreat.com/dsm4-aspergers.html

Studies have shown that HFAs tend to have higher written IQ than spoken, and it's reversed for AS.

Also, as I understand it, aspies seek out social interaction, whereas HFAs avoid it unless approached.

Well, yeah, if you put all the speech delayed people in one group, obviously it's that group that'll have the lower verbal and higher performance IQs...

There are plenty of socially interactive HFAs, plenty of asocial Aspies. It's not a hard and fast rule. (Nothing about autistic people ever is.)

I also had a speech delay but I was still diagnosed with AS. I am not even a typical aspie.


HFA isn't a real label but it just means they had a speech delay but now they don't anymore. While aspies never had a speech delay. They talk early or on time. They also don't have a developmental delay except in social skills while HFA's did.

Also, I have read that aspies tend to score average or above average on the IQ test while HFA's might score below average. I read an article somewhere that HFA's are more visual while aspies are verbal learners. While aspies to want friends and try and fit in, HFA's prefer to be isolated and don't try to seek out.

There is an argument that HFA and AS are the same. Some say AS is mild autism. It is if you look at the whole spectrum. AS is on the mild end of it.

But some people have both HFA and aspie traits so where do we put them? PDD-NOS? I seem to be all over, more HFA (my hearing loss is to blame) but I am mild and the mildest on the spectrum, I think any less, I'd just have traits only and not be on the spectrum. I was placed in the aspie catagory.

HFA sound's more like me.... I don't like to seek for social interactions with anybody and it kinda drains me out and I sometimes get pretty scared when I do try to make an effort of doing it.... But the weird thing is that when I think the person looks cool or awesome, I also want to talk to them but get shy of talking to them... but then I could end up talking for hours and hours and hours whenever somebody talks about a typical interest that i'm in... I could go on and on and on for hours and feeling temped to go on and on about it.

It's kinda unclear, because there are all of the differences that I see people talking about here, but when I was reading about it before, it seemed like there was a lot of debate as to whether or not they were even separate disorders at all, and when the new DSM comes out with autism actually being a spectrum, isn't the AS diagnosis going to become part of HFA anyway? Which would kinda indicate that the professional opinion is that there is no difference.
So, um, in conclusion: it's debatable. Lol, yea, that's like saying "the answer is that there is no answer." That may be exactly what I"m saying.

That is what I recall from past discussion here, and I believe Tony Atwood says AS and HFA are the same.

It's my understanding that I got tagged with AS because of my above average IQ but I don't even consider myself high functioning.

Technically this is a difficult one to debate on.....

http://www.nas.org.uk/nas/jsp/polopoly. ... 493&a=3337 << This website seems to kinda give a clearer answer but i'm still unsure as other websites have mentioned that it is not recognized as a official diagnosis and couple possibly mean the same thing?

The reverse is important, too. A significant higher verbal IQ than a written one is explained by... what, exactly?

Communication is the key, I suppose. How we communicate and with whom.

Those with higher IQ's are more likely to be diagnosed with AS just because of their IQ. There's apparently an idea amongst the psychiatric community that autism makes a person partially ret*d.

I know one guy with an above average IQ who is diagnosed HFA, so that doesn't make sense to me. I agree about the verbal vs. written difference, though. The majority of HFA people I've met do not speak fluently at all, with one notable exception, a man who's diagnosis still puzzles me even after his explanation. He appears more high functioning than the aspies in the group I attend, appears totally NT to me, yet says that it was the way he was brought up and the fact that he was enrolled in mainstream education that resulted in him being that way.

I don't really see what difference it makes. There are many variables and it's usually up to the diagnostician in the end to call it as they see it. I am autistic. PERIOD I really don't see what the big deal is because I don't have a problem with it either way. Early Infantile Autism has been documented in my case and yet I was labeled with AS.

From looking at all sorts of information in the past, I believe that AS and HFA are the same thing. If there is a difference, it's most likely very slight.

Ditto. My academic skills are the only part of my "functioning" that is anywhere above average. I apparently lag behind most mildly mentally ret*d people when it comes to most other skills. For example, I have only been preparing my own meals with any sort of order for two months now--before then it was all "same thing every day" or "forget to eat, get way too hungry, and gobble down anything in sight". Apparently, your average Down syndrome kid can learn that in their teens, and your average NT not too much earlier. Why they call me "gifted" I will never know. The only people who ever see said giftedness are my professors, and that's only when my poor organization skills, inertia, and general executive dysfunction don't stop me from doing the work in the first place.

I honestly think that the difference between HFA and AS is not in the people with the diagnosis--it's in the psychologists' perceptions. If you seem intelligent, you are given AS as a diagnosis. If not, Autism. It has nothing to do with your actual intelligence. It has nothing to do with whether you fit one set of criteria or the other. It often has very little to do with whether you were speech-delayed. It just has to do with how they see you--through what are usually neurotypical eyes--either as intelligent or not.

It's actually a really nice way to divide-and-conquer. Your basic neurobigot is pretty happy to have the Aspies over in one spot, telling each other they're of above average intelligence and not like "those autistic people over there", the high-functioning autistics over in another little group going, "Yeah, I might be autistic, but I'm high-functioning!", never mentioning their autism without their high-functioning-ness. And then you've got the people they label low-functioning, either isolated and unable to connect with any other autistics at all, or else pissed off that everybody else is pitying them for not being high-functioning, or else annoyed that all these people without any "real problems" are claiming to be autistic too. With everybody off in their little groups going, "Nyahh, I'm smarter/more truly autistic/better off/etc. than you!" it's really easy to sneak in a lot of human-rights abuses while nobody's free to speak up against them.

The way they're spelled.