Understanding Autism For Dummies
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People with Asperger Syndrome tend to be exceptional. Their ability to communicate, their great memories, and their intelligence often mean that teachers, doctors, and family members don't notice the real challenges in socialization and pragmatics that they face.

As a result, children and adults with Asperger Syndrome often don’t get correct diagnoses or receive the proper treatment and support until later in life (compared to those who are more severely affected with autism and are more noticeable). Professionals sometimes refer to Asperger Syndrome as the “new kid on the block” because the diagnosis didn’t even appear in the Diagnostics and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders until 1994.

Individuals with Asperger Syndrome often exhibit some of the following characteristics:

  • Average to above average IQ. Not everyone with Asperger Syndrome is a genius; however, many people with this condition have significant intellectual gifts. People elsewhere on the autism spectrum tend to have lower measurable IQs (although this is a big generalization, and every case is unique).

  • Concrete “black-and-white” thinking. Many people with Asperger Syndrome don’t understand unspoken rules, due to difficulties with interpreting figures of speech and nonverbal communication. They tend to rely solely on the words themselves. Difficulty with perceiving nonverbal communication causes significant challenges during social interaction. The same characteristic holds true for people with more classic autism. However, this trait tends to be more startling in those with Asperger Syndrome, due to their often superior verbal skills.

    Despite the fact that many persons suffering with Asperger Syndrome have high IQs, due to challenges in understanding the unspoken rules of employment, they’re greatly challenged in being successful at a typical job.

  • No significant clinical delay in verbal communication. However, the verbal communication of people with Asperger’s is often characterized by differences in melody, rhythm, tempo, and pitch of speech — otherwise known as vocal prosody. Individuals with Asperger Syndrome can often speak complete, grammatically correct sentences without knowing what they actually mean.

  • Desire to have friends without knowing how to make and keep them. This social conflict can result in loneliness and sometimes leads to the person using unusual ways to attract friends and, when entering adulthood, significant others. For example, a person with Asperger Syndrome may monologue about a personal passion without perceiving the nonverbal cues that the listener is getting bored or wants to have a chance to talk — or to change the subject.

  • Sensitivities to sight, touch, hearing, taste, and smell. Input to one or more of these senses often overwhelms people on the autism spectrum.

About This Article

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About the book authors:

Stephen M. Shore received a regressive autism diagnosis at age 18 months, became nonverbal, and was deemed “too sick” to be treated on an outpatient basis. Today, he’s finishing a doctoral degree focused on helping people with autism lead fulfilling and productive lives. When not teaching college-level courses in special education and teaching children with autism how to play musical instruments, he consults and presents on autism-related issues internationally. Some topics of particular interest to him include comparative approaches for helping people with autism, education, and disaster preparedness for people with disabilities. He also focuses on challenges faced by adults in terms of self-advocacy, disclosure, post-secondary education, employment, interdependent living, and relationships.
Stephen holds bachelor degrees in music and accounting and information systems from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He also holds a masters degree in music education and is on the cusp of finishing his doctorate in education from Boston University. Although he seems to spend most of his time traveling in airplanes (Boeing 747-400 preferred), he resides in Brookline, Massachusetts, with his wife on the rare occasions when he’s home.

Linda G. Rastelli is an award-winning journalist, instructional designer, and author with 20 years of experience in writing and designing instruction for health, education, and business topics. In her career, she has focused on making complex and technical information understandable to the layperson. Although she has covered subjects ranging from financial ratio analysis to educational reform, her most challenging inquiry to date — an undertaking that has made her other projects look like finger painting in comparison — has been autism.
Linda holds a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Delaware and a masters degree from Columbia University. She lives on the New Jersey coast with her husband and her cat, who have reached a blissful state of detente. She hopes to keep her day job.

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