What is Asperger Syndrome

Male: Now there are kids who are not diagnosed and they get in to school and they notice the kid does not socialize, he does not function as well as he should be and you have this term Asperger’s syndrome.
Female: Asperger Syndrome is the newest classification that got added to our diagnostic system in 1994 and I hate to use the term high-functioning because I think it is misleading people to think that high functioning, low functioning is verbal and non-verbal. But these are kids who typically have normal IQ, which means that they do well academically and so often, parents are relieved because their kids are doing fine academically, but then kindergarten, first grade—they have no friends, sometimes they get into fights because they responded inappropriately to social situations and in many cases, later on, these kids will be diagnosed with what is called Asperger’s disorder which is really a primary disorder of being unable to recognize social cues. And it is a neurological disorder just like autism is, but it is so misunderstood by others because the idea of making friends come so naturally to people and we recognize it in facial expressions or understanding intonation and speech, whereas for a lot of kids with Asperger’s disorder or adult Asperger’s disorder, they just cannot read them. They cannot read the cues and it makes socializing very, very difficult.
Male: Well, there are some people when they become adults, gets this diagnosed and that is a new word, is that correct?
Female: Well, a lot of adults are being diagnosed now because the diagnostic term did not come into our Lexicon until 1994, so there really was not even an available diagnosis for diagnosticians prior to that, so now we are starting to see a lot of adults who were always the sort of outlier, what we would probably term the different adult. The person who sort has remained alone a lot who are now finally understanding that they have Asperger’s disorder.



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