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Asperger's Syndrome

I was with you up until your last paragraph, Colin. It makes sense for a group of people to take a word that is generally used to bring them down, and try to make it something positive. It is no different than, a historical example, homosexuals turning the use of "gay" from a slur into something neutral or positive.
 
lol, although it is on topic, this is slightly off topic. that third paragraph is probably the first time ive ever agreed with something colin has said. And the 4th as well.

Ive lived my life for around 14 years having my parents tell me "something is off with me" and while technically this is true, people "with" asperger's dont follow the traditional social norm, there is absolutely nothing "wrong" with them. I know some people who say "i like who i am, i dont want to adapt to the norm" in regards to the social aspects. However, people that make excuses, that blame genes or medicine and never bother to get help and have the will not to change, are pitiful.

On a personal level, i went to therapy for a good 4 years at least, one on one therapy with a psychiatrist. Then, i think for about a year, maybe less, i went to a physical therapist. At this point, id like to believe these things helped my personal goal of becoming more social and overall less awkward really. I have no idea what i'd be doing right now if i didn't partake in athletic recreations like bowling, basketball, baseball or general teenage fun and games. I would probably hate myself.
 
Colin, you haven't read anything I've posted outside of my genetic argument it seems. If you had, you'd know that even I think Asperger's Syndrome is a faulty diagnosis in that it's just a way of saying autism while trying to avoid saying that the person is retarded. If you had read my earlier comments, you'd know that autism is reworking of the neural pathways of the brain. It's physical and concrete, and lack of social skills is only a possible characteristic. If it's become the most telling characteristic for the wrong reasons, blame the psychologists.

With all due respect, you've exercised that you know absolutely nothing about my people. You've no doubt meet people online who acted like jerks and said that it was okay because they had asperger's syndrome. The truth is that people who are autistic and lack empathic skills generally work their whole lives trying to become more normal. Those who are genuinely autistic don't use it as a crutch or an excuse, and I myself have come to a point where I can socialize just fine. But I was never "cured", my sensory abilities are still radically altered to a measurable degree.

While I don't like the term Asperger's Syndrome, I do shy away from calling it a developmental disorder or saying that it has symptoms. Autism is a small part of my identity.

As for genetics, it seems like I can't make any matter of fact statement without being accused of making a logical fallacy but the alternative, suggesting that mercury or flu shots causes autism, is absurd fear mongering. It's the kind of thing suggested by people who want to eliminate autism altogether.

EDIT: If there was a Pill for Autism you bet your ass there'd be any number of scientific studies telling us how Autism works and what causes it. But I guess I should be thankful there isn't one.
 
vonFiedler said:
If you had read my earlier comments, you'd know that autism is reworking of the neural pathways of the brain. It's physical and concrete, and lack of social skills is only a possible characteristic. If it's become the most telling characteristic for the wrong reasons, blame the psychologists.
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I haven't seen any definition of Asperger's Syndrome that involves "neural pathways of the brain". Certainly one of the most commonly used definitions is the one found in the DSM. Criteria A, B, and C are all related to social skills. You can "blame the psychologists" for this in the sense that they created Asperger's Syndrome and defined it based around social skills.

When you were diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, did your doctor order scans of your brain and make the diagnosis by a detailed analysis thereof? Of course not, because there's no way to diagnose Asperger's Syndrome this way, since there's no reason to believe that two people who meet the criteria would even have the same discernible physical brain features.
 
Colin said:
I haven't seen any definition of Asperger's Syndrome that involves "neural pathways of the brain".
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But that's what Autism is, and any definition of Asperger's almost certainly mentions that it's a mild form of Autism. And you don't have to scan someone's brain to test their sensory abilities. I've been trying to work on a method of diagnosis that would be far more than the DSM, but the notion of sense goes far beyond the "five senses" we are taught in elementary school, especially when dealing with Autism. In other words, its a work in progress, but we can agree the current system is faulty. This does not mean that autism is non existent or "all in the head".
 
vonFiedler said:
But that's what Autism is
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Well, that's what some people like to speculate it is. But it's diagnosed based on social interaction and communication skills. No brain scans or genetic tests or anything else scientific you might expect if we were dealing with something with a single etiology.

This doesn't mean that Asperger's Syndrome or Austism "don't exist" in some sense. But they're effect-based categories, rather than cause-based categories.
 
I don't think diagnostics should affect the characteristics of syndromes such as Asperger's. Criteria related to social skills shouldn't mean that those people lack social skills because of Asperger's.

If you ask me, that's not science or psychology, that's almost like saying "you're stupid, therefore you will fail an exam". Asperger's is a condition which alters the way some humans "think" (notice this is neutral), not a mark or curse that is placed upon some people because they do not meet certain criteria (which would be regarded as negative).

I suppose long story short I just do not like the whole concept of Asperger's, or how people diagnose it. Everyone is unique and other factors can influence social skills such as being raised in domestic abuse, or not ever going to school. I suppose relative tests could be done on people from select groups, but even then it's shady at best I feel.

Edit: "effect based categories" actually sums up Asperger's quite well. Still shows the system is somewhat faulty in my opinion
 
Colin said:
With regard to Asperger's Syndrome itself, it is a classic case of psychiatry acting to pathologise perfectly normal behaviour. The only reason any people exhibit "impairment in social interaction" (to use the DSM term) is that they choose to, and that's not a bad thing. Consider this: if you really wanted to understand "body language", you could easily notice connections between people's gestures and their mood. It's simple inductive reasoning. If somebody were actually unable to pick up on this, it would mean she lacked basic inducting reasoning skills, and her main problem would be that, not "Asperger's Syndrome". The reality is these people are simply uninterested in learning these so-called "social skills", because there's nothing inherently important about them.
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I disagree that if someone is unable to understand body language that they therefore lack inductive reasoning skills.

For instance, certain post-stroke victims suffer a form of anosognosia where they become unaware that they've become disabled. For instance, a common case is when a person who experienced a right-hemisphere stroke completely denies that his or her left arm is paralysed, despite them being unable to move it. One hypothesis might be that the stroke damaged an area of the brain responsible for higher-level reasoning, but that would be incorrect, since many anosognosia patients can suffer from multiple impairments, but still be fully aware of other ones [1].

Not only that, but studies have shown that those suffering with left-arm paralysis can be stimulated to temporarily realise that their arm is paralysed, only to deny it when the effect wears off! [2] It seems that patients suffering from this condition ultimately don't suffer from any impairment in reasoning, but rather have a problem with higher level sensory integration of their bodies after a stroke.

Because of this, I think that it could be fully possible for someone to suffer from a neurological condition that inhibits them from picking up body language, but otherwise doesn't affect their abstract reasoning skills in any way. However, I agree that there isn't any evidence to suggest that Asperger's Syndrome is such a condition, and that it's probably used to treat a somewhat common variance in behaviour as a "disease".

1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anosognosia#cite_note-2
2 http://www.neurology.org/cgi/content/abstract/65/8/1278
 
It is also possibly due to vision impairment. If your eyes have a particularly slow frame rate (metaphorically), you might just not receive the information you need to be able to make deductions other people would consider intuitive.

[edit] - this also could be a cause of coordination issues.. Man psychology is easy.

Have a nice day.
 
Aspie, loud and proud. I still can't tolerate the weight and feel of much else other than 100% cotton on my skin. Here's a brief breakdown of my experiences:

Ever since I was a kid, my parents knew I was different. By the age of 3, I was reading the comics out loud. As I got older and we moved to Oklahoma, I did such things as mocked my interviewer's Southern drawl, seeing as how I was born in Wisconsin.

After a few years of living in fear of tornadoes during that time of the year, we moved back up to Wisconsin, and the fight to secure a decent special education program was on. I must have been in 3 different schools before they finally settled on one, though the principal was fairly draconian, forcing me to skip lunch on multiple occasions. I even recall seeing a physical therapist who taught me how to navigate stairs without putting both feet on a step.

Elementary school gave way to middle school, and it was then that my talents began to truly shine. For reasons unknown to me, I was chosen to sit in a room with a bunch of high school kids and take the ACT along with them when I was 11-12 years old, and my penchant for random bits of trivia also showed with back to back school geography bee championships as well as a first place finish in a Junior College Bowl tournament.

High school was a mixed bag. For the first year and a half, my dad and I didn't get along so well. We had always had our differences, but over the years they had been getting louder and more violent. I even received a shiner from one encounter. I am now under the impression that I got my Asperger's from him, which would have explained our chronic inability to read each other.

Possibly the most trying moment of my young life up to that point was moving to Michigan and starting in a new high school in the middle of the year. As much as I tried to stay invisible, it just didn't happen. I even ended up in the yearbook, though the caption misidentified me as a guy a year under me that happened to share my first name. Then I discovered Quiz Bowl, and I took to it like a <insert cliche here>. I made friends, I kicked ass, and I even managed to talk the student council into organizing an intramural tournament for Homecoming once. (Not to mention I still have some nice bling from the days when I was taking Latin.)

Then college started, and Asperger's bit me in the ass again. Long story short, I lost my full ride, and I've been more or less drifting ever since.
 
Hipmonlee said:
It is also possibly due to vision impairment. If your eyes have a particularly slow frame rate (metaphorically), you might just not receive the information you need to be able to make deductions other people would consider intuitive.

[edit] - this also could be a cause of coordination issues.. Man psychology is easy.

Have a nice day.
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Actually I see moving objects much faster than the average person. It's objects that stand still that are problematic.
 
Well that could just as easily be the cause of it, the point really was that there are plenty of explanations other than a lack of inductive reasoning that could prevent a person from understanding body language.

Have a nice day.
 
Hipmonlee said:
Well that could just as easily be the cause of it, the point really was that there are plenty of explanations other than a lack of inductive reasoning that could prevent a person from understanding body language.

Have a nice day.
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Sight and inductive reasoning have nothing to do with it. Fuck, I've been accused of using inductive reasoning like twice now on Smogon, once in this thread. Reading body language accurately is a sense, and people with autism don't have normal senses. That's the root of everything.
 
My younger brother was diagnosed with Asperger's, and while I don't think I have nearly the same qualifications as someone who actually has been diagnosed themselves, I might as well post about it.

To start, I probably should talk about my brother. He is fluent in 3 languages and can speak bits and pieces of many more, he has problems talking about anything but the things that he is obsessed with (he was obsessed with teletubbies for about 3 years, has always displayed in varying intensity an obsession with sports statistics, and now is obsessed with many 60-70's cartoon characters -- I haven't had a conversation with him in about a month that has not included him talking about Wally Gator or before i interrupt him about to say something about wally gator; there are other examples of this as well), has severe social impairments (he got kicked out of a special ed school back in 8th grade because his threatening of a student there had the cops have to come to the school; he's had to be controlled by cops due to temper tantrums on multiple occasions; on a less serious note, he doesn't make too many friends and can't really hold any sort of conversation), and has always displayed highly sensitive hearing (although he has improved a lot in being able to handle going to somewhat busy restaurants now). He certainly, from my own mind and from just about anyone who has interacted with my brother, has something different about him.

I guess this leads to my next point about the misdiagnosis idea. Just like ADHD, if one were to look at the diagnostic qualities that define ADHD or Autism, many of these characteristics are in many, if not most children (especially ADHD; seriously, in psych class we popped open the DSM-IV to look at the diagnostic qualities of ADHD and in pretty much everyone in the room's opinion, they apply to just about every kid ever). However, this isn't to say that there isn't something to diagnose. Sure, the diagnostic qualities are very vague at times, and there's a reason why self-diagnosis is dumb. However, it's pretty clear that some people who are diagnosed with these labels (like my brother) certainly have something about them that would fit the diagnosis to the point of being more than just "an average kid." I really am tempted to go into a rant about "what is average," but I'll restrain myself. I think it's a shame that Asperger's and autism, and even ADHD -- although a separate topic altogether -- are over-diagnosed, but this isn't to say that these "disorders" do not exist.

I'll edit in more later.
 
Colin said:
What baffles me the most is that some people diagnosed by a psychiatrist with "Asperger's Syndrome" choose to embrace it as an identity. The diagnosis is basically an attack on your interests and your choice of what to prioritise in life. If we want to celebrate differences in personalities, let's come up with a movement with no psychiatric baggage.
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I just choose not to see diagnoses such as this an "attack" necessarily. Let's face it, society doesn't tolerate everything under the sun, but that's the full extent of the negative connotation. I think that we've put too much focus on the label itself and so we end up looking at all the bad things that the label has done. However, the diagnosis also provides a way to try to describe common traits, which has led to attempts at solutions that try to equip people with AS to contribute better to society. And although many of these attempts have been flawed in one way or another, I think that it is important to move the science of psychology forward, because when compared to e.g. physics it's probably still in it's infancy.

That said, I agree that it should be treated as a trait, not an identity. A poster comes to mind that said, "I'm not schizophrenic. [...] I have schizophrenia." My traits are part of who I am, but I am not those traits.
 
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