Redefining the Spectrum

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Seems to me this whole spectrum is impossible.

The Autism Spectrum is so diverse that you may as well just create a "Human Spectrum" and be done with it. Every human being would fall into the spectrum at some point, from genius and fully functional to physically ill or mentally ill. The autism spectrum is just impossibly diverse.

Don't you think people will look some 20 years from now and wonder why in the world we all struggled along with this spectrum?

Just visualize a medical encyclopedia with just one spectrum in it - the sickness spectrum. It covers everything that can go wrong with a person and it's not separate, just one thing. You're either well or sick. If you tell someone you're sick it could mean anything from a cold to cancer.

I have so many Asperger traits, test high on every test, relate so completely to it and when I learned of AS and read the symptoms to my immediate family they laughed out loud and asked if my picture was in that book because it was so clearly me. BUT I recently met some AS people in person at a group. They were much less functional and limited in different areas and I came away doubting my own AS. If you try to find another Aspie who is 'like' you, isn't it just impossible?

It's wonderful to have found Wrong Planet because I have shared so many great moments of discovery with others here - finding out they have the same quirk or are upset or annoyed by exactly the same things. That's priceless. (Thanks Alex)

But we're all still sooooooo unique and sooooo different.

We want the NT world to learn about us and accept us, it's April now and it's Autism Awareness Month, but I have to feel a bit sympathetic toward NTs - how can they learn about a moving target or understand us when we don't even understand ourselves?

Well, while I agree that the whole spectrum concept is far too broad and vague to have any empirical scientific value, even if we subdivide Autism into not just levels, but 'types' and give each type a specific name (which is why I advocate leaving the Asperger designation IN the DSM), we still have the problem of being able to demonstrate clearly in an easily comprehensible way, how these invisible deficits (and of course those of us who have them are all too familiar with their reality) actually handicap us on a daily basis. In the less functional, it's obvious. For those of us who speak coherently, it's much harder for others to even understand there's a problem. And when you see how diverse personality types can be even within that high functioning disorder, it becomes even harder to understand just what the handicap is.

At the end of it all, there has to be a way of getting the idea across. Certainly not everyone with Dyslexia has a similar personality. AS, too is a brain dysfunction that causes a skew in perception (among other things). You rarely hear anyone scoff at the existence of Dyslexia anymore. Hopefully, we will eventually have the same success getting the neurodiversity message across for AS and HFA as well.

I think that the spectrum is a very complex thing. There are as many sets or combinations of traits and issues, as there are, autistic people, who are living in this world, today. It's not just one set of issues that we all share.

It would have topology in too many dimensions,
and be hard to understand as a 3D graph, unless the
range cube maybe had semitransparent volumetric zones
of different colors with the person diagnosed as a white star
somewhere in those possibly overlapping regions.
The graph would also require a hologram or lenticular lens to view
in a portable format.

Maybe a simple non-spectrograph would be a bar graph
with a bar for each somewhat measureable (tested) symptom type score.

Such precise personality profiling would be extremely dangerous
in the hands of a political regime with eugenic or genocidal motives.

The fact that there is the concept of a spectrum is encouraging in that our similarities are taken into consideration without the exclusion of our differences. At the same time, I agree with Williard. As time goes on I suppose they'll make improvements on the description and categorization of it. I feel lucky it's happened in my lifetime - it wasn't really well known when I was in school and my poor teachers didn't always know what to do with me. I could have used the help that's becoming available to kids these days.

Yes, a spectrum can be confusing and inadequate at times, but any system of categorizing people is going to have its faults. One thing that is generally implicit in discussion of autism is that the more "severe" specific symptoms, the lower-functioning the person. Also, these symptoms have to be from the DSM. The problem with this is that autism is a very nuanced and complicated difference and some of the "highest-functioning" people have some of the greatest difficulties. I like the spectrum idea generally, I think it makes some sense. There probably should be more spectrum-style thinking in the world instead of the "everyone is the same, but with deficits" that I often see.

earthmom, you have not redefined anything. All you have done is point out flaws in the current model without positing any other or better way of doing it.

Will people look back and consider our current knowledge and probably our current paradigms in this area, rudimentary? I very much expect so. Should we just throw our hands in the air and give up? Well if we do then future people probably will not look back and find our current knowledge and paradigms rudimentary because they will not know much or anymore than we do now.

Until we can come up with something better, we need something to be getting on with so we can acquire the knowledge needed to get beyond the rudimentary.

I did not attempt to redefine anything. I pointed out that it needs to be redefined. It's too broad now.

And it's too continuous to be chopped into bits any smaller than it already is. That's why the Asperger's diagnosis is going to vanish--it was impossible to tell it apart from regular autism once you were older than five or so.

NTs like to stereotype things. That's why it's hard for them to accept a diverse Spectrum; they (well, humans in general) like generalizations because they're just easier. Took us a while to figure out that women weren't all the same, or black people weren't all the same, or gay people weren't all the same. It'll take us a while with autism, too.

Oh, I don't agree with that at all. This so-called 'spectrum' can still be sub divided at several points.



You know that's not accurate - you can tell high-functioning from low functioning at any age.

You can tell the difference between the 1% of autistic people who would always be called "low-functioning" and the 10% or so who would always be called "high-functioning". The 89% in the middle? Not so much.

The categories simply aren't clear. What do you call someone who can't take care of himself and has to be watched 24 hours a day? Low-functioning? Now give them an IQ of 140. Still low-functioning? How about if their IQ is 100? What if it's 100 because they've got a verbal IQ of 60 and a performance IQ of 120; or if it varies so much from day to day that you can't even tell what it is? What if they can speak? What if the speech isn't communicative--just repeated phrases that don't say what they're thinking? What if they can work? What if they can only work if they've got a one on one job coach? Where, exactly, are the lines? There are no definitions, and by any standard you care to use, if you try to make it concrete, you'll end up with people who "in the wrong category".

The only standard for "high-functioning" and "low-functioning" is how the professionals perceive you. That is not a good standard to use, especially because of how badly it lends itself to stereotyping and incorrect conclusions about people's abilities.

Plus, people move between categories. The non-verbal, head-banging five year old could be the shy, obsessive college student, given fifteen years. And the stereotypically Aspie little-professor five-year-old could be living at home in fifteen years, unable to do his own cooking or his own shopping, unable to remember on his own to wash himself often enough, with meltdowns severe enough that he's got to have somebody with him all the time. You simply can't tell which is going to be which.

Up to a point I agree. It does not appear that the work has been done to isolate critical features and establish a welldefined category [I do classification for main intersest and living, so bear with me.

Fact is, both the Spectrum and "NTdom" are wastebasket categories, not real classes. You get to be NT IF you fall within a certain range in MOST of an arbitrary set of parameters. By that my siblings are {with maybe one exception] clearly NT but they for certain sure are NOT neurotypicall.

If you do not satisfy that criteriaon, you will probably wind up getting placed somewhere near the spectrum.

We need REAL RESEARCH, folks?

having AS is like being a Mac in PC world We are all computer but I work different than the majority of them. I do think AS should be a separate spectrum, but it should also be considered within the human spectrum.