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Difference between HFA and Aspergers?

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Hi there, would someone please mind explaining the difference between High Functioning Autism and Aspergers? Many thanks.

 

 

Hi.Different professionals do reach different conclusions.However briefly if a child has ASD but the development of speech was within normal limits or advanced then the diagnosis will most likely be AS.It there is evidence of significant speech delay then the diagnosis will usually be High Functioning Autism.

In practice the difference is not really too important and is more a professional opinion than anything.All of the support and interventions that might be suggested are the same. :) Karen.

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Hi.Different professionals do reach different conclusions.However briefly if a child has ASD but the development of speech was within normal limits or advanced then the diagnosis will most likely be AS.It there is evidence of significant speech delay then the diagnosis will usually be High Functioning Autism.

In practice the difference is not really too important and is more a professional opinion than anything.All of the support and interventions that might be suggested are the same. :) Karen.

 

 

Hi thanks, thats what I thought but my son was diagnosed with HFA even though he didn't have any speech delay. . . .I'm not too worried, just curious.

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Hi my son is also dx'd High Functioning Austism but had no speech delay (quite the opposite in fact).

 

My son' s consultant said he couldn't dx with Aspergers because he didn't "tick all the boxes" and that he has learnt many things through his family and his peers, for example, he understands most facial expressions, he doesn't take things literally and understands most jokes . I guess it depends on the health professionals??? xx

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Have to agree my son understands sarcasm, jokes, literal meanings and has a diagnosis of Aspergers , as for ticking boxes there are 4 main ones re aspergers and I will clarify more when I am not attempting to write an essay for uni

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The reason for the confusion in diagnosis is simple - different authorities argue for different diagnostic criteria. So how a person is labelled may well depend on where the clinician was trained or which diagnostic manual they habitually use. However, this doesn't mean that there's a disagreement over fundamental matters - what label has been applied should not matter as much as the way the person concerned is treated.

 

Also, it's important to remember that to be diagnosed with a particular condition, you don't necessarily have to have exactly the same conditions as everyone else. For example, over my professional life I've conducted research on Alzheimer's disease, Williams syndrome and ASD, and in all three conditions, people can have radically different sets of conditions and yet receive the same diagnosis. This isn't just in conditions that primarily have psychological symptoms where there may be an element of subjective judgement. There's a large number of physical diseases where two people can have very different symptoms and yet have the same disease.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Please feel free to correct me but if you have a diagnosis of Alzheimers you have it as it just the name Alois Alzheimer named after looking down a microscope at a bunch of cells in the brain. I know many people get a diagnosis of Dementia without it being a fact but for Alzheimers a c.t. scan is done , that is not to say they may have had different risk factors or even behave differently but you would not diagnose Alzheimers on a set of behaviours alone

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Please feel free to correct me but if you have a diagnosis of Alzheimers you have it as it just the name Alois Alzheimer named after looking down a microscope at a bunch of cells in the brain. I know many people get a diagnosis of Dementia without it being a fact but for Alzheimers a c.t. scan is done , that is not to say they may have had different risk factors or even behave differently but you would not diagnose Alzheimers on a set of behaviours alone

 

I think you will find that the majority of people who are diagnosis with Alzheimer's are done so on behaviour alone.

 

A scan is only done where there is a possibility that it may be something else.

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I think you will find that the majority of people who are diagnosis with Alzheimer's are done so on behaviour alone.

 

A scan is only done where there is a possibility that it may be something else.

 

 

Again must be down to area

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Please feel free to correct me but if you have a diagnosis of Alzheimers you have it as it just the name Alois Alzheimer named after looking down a microscope at a bunch of cells in the brain. I know many people get a diagnosis of Dementia without it being a fact but for Alzheimers a c.t. scan is done , that is not to say they may have had different risk factors or even behave differently but you would not diagnose Alzheimers on a set of behaviours alone

 

With respect it's more complicated than that. Dementia has fifty or so causes, of which Alzheimer's disease (which is indeed named after Alois Alzheimer) is the commonest. However, the different forms of dementia are often very difficult to tell apart based on behaviour alone. For example, most people think that Alzheimer's disease is characterised by memory loss. In fact, it can start with profound problems with e.g. visuo-spatial skills or language. But so can several other forms of dementia. So the different types of dementia have symptoms in common and it would be foolhardy to say that one type of dementia is characterised by a unique set of symptoms.

 

However, clinicians can make a reasonable estimate of which type of dementia it is based on other features. For example, a long history of cardiovascular illness coupled with symptoms of dementia greatly increases the chances that the dementia is in fact vascular dementia (in essence caused by thousands of silent strokes). If the dementing symptoms tend to get worse in a stepwise rather than gradual pattern, this increases the probability. A dementia that begins with behavioural changes before intellectual changes is more likely to be Pick's Disease. And so on and so forth. Scans can (and do) help, but not every patient presents with a clear pattern of brain change which means that a clear-cut definition is hard to make.

 

I don't want all this to sound doom and gloom as the 'anti-dementia' drugs can dramatically slow the progress of the illness in some cases, but there is still a long way to go in refining both assessment and treatment of the dementias.

 

 

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With respect it's more complicated than that. Dementia has fifty or so causes, of which Alzheimer's disease (which is indeed named after Alois Alzheimer) is the commonest. However, the different forms of dementia are often very difficult to tell apart based on behaviour alone. For example, most people think that Alzheimer's disease is characterised by memory loss. In fact, it can start with profound problems with e.g. visuo-spatial skills or language. But so can several other forms of dementia. So the different types of dementia have symptoms in common and it would be foolhardy to say that one type of dementia is characterised by a unique set of symptoms.

 

However, clinicians can make a reasonable estimate of which type of dementia it is based on other features. For example, a long history of cardiovascular illness coupled with symptoms of dementia greatly increases the chances that the dementia is in fact vascular dementia (in essence caused by thousands of silent strokes). If the dementing symptoms tend to get worse in a stepwise rather than gradual pattern, this increases the probability. A dementia that begins with behavioural changes before intellectual changes is more likely to be Pick's Disease. And so on and so forth. Scans can (and do) help, but not every patient presents with a clear pattern of brain change which means that a clear-cut definition is hard to make.

 

I don't want all this to sound doom and gloom as the 'anti-dementia' drugs can dramatically slow the progress of the illness in some cases, but there is still a long way to go in refining both assessment and treatment of the dementias.

 

Although this is a forum for aspergers and the like I will still reply as many people may be affected with relatives having a dementia .I really have to disagree with you . I am well aware of the diagnostic criteria for dementia my point was that Alzheimers is a certain formation of brain cells that cvan not be guessed upon, a probable diagnosis can be given and even medication started but my point is that it is not a definate . I personally think you may have spent too lonmg on wikipedia for your research and are sendign out false or misleadign information to the genral public ......please be mindful when you post especially when you have limited and biased information

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I personally think you may have spent too lonmg on wikipedia for your research and are sendign out false or misleadign information to the genral public ......please be mindful when you post especially when you have limited and biased information

 

Actually, I'm a professor of psychology and spent two years researching Alzheimer's disease on a grant from the Wellcome Trust. And my book on the psychology of ageing (which includes a fairly lengthy section on dementia) is now in its fourth edition and is translated into 14 or 15 languages (sorry, but one loses count after a while). Google my name sometime if you don't believe me.

 

I am well aware of the diagnostic criteria for dementia my point was that Alzheimers is a certain formation of brain cells that cvan not be guessed upon, a probable diagnosis can be given and even medication started but my point is that it is not a definate

`

I'd comment on this more but I'm really not sure what you're trying to say. The two well documented cellular changes in AD are: senile plaques (essentially, clumps of dead brain cells that cluster in little lumps) and neurofibrillary tangles (essentially, 'strings' of dead neural tissue). These are not always reliable indicators of the extent of the dementia, since there are well-documented cases where it has been shown post mortem that the number of plaques and tangles has had little relation to the severity of the symptoms shown in life. For example, there are cases of people with brains full of plaques and tangles who had no sign of dementia and others who had severe dementing symptoms but no plaques or tangles. So yes indeed, diagnosis is difficult because symptoms do not reliably present themselves in a neat fashion, a point I tried to make in the previous post.

 

Edited by ian stuart-hamilton

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Actually, I'm a professor of psychology and spent two years researching Alzheimer's disease on a grant from the Wellcome Trust. And my book on the psychology of ageing (which includes a fairly lengthy section on dementia) is now in its fourth edition and is translated into 14 or 15 languages (sorry, but one loses count after a while). Google my name sometime if you don't believe me.

 

 

`

I'd comment on this more but I'm really not sure what you're trying to say. The two well documented cellular changes in AD are: senile plaques (essentially, clumps of dead brain cells that cluster in little lumps) and neurofibrillary tangles (essentially, 'strings' of dead neural tissue). These are not always reliable indicators of the extent of the dementia, since there are well-documented cases where it has been shown post mortem that the number of plaques and tangles has had little relation to the severity of the symptoms shown in life. For example, there are cases of people with brains full of plaques and tangles who had no sign of dementia and others who had severe dementing symptoms but no plaques or tangles. So yes indeed, diagnosis is difficult because symptoms do not reliably present themselves in a neat fashion, a point I tried to make in the previous post.

 

 

I shall google you and get back......pleae don't google me :jester:

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My son was diagnosed with HFA at age 6 (he is now 8). The Developmental Paediatrician talked with us about Aspergers and HFA. Firstly my son was speaking two word combinations at 2+ years old. At age 3 I noticed that suddenly he was using alot of words/phrases from TV and was putting it together with his own words, rather like a verbal jigsaw puzzle. This is delayed echolalia, which my son still uses to this day. So his language development was not typical, and indeed how he acquired language is also reflected in how he learns ie. top down and not bottom up. At the time this meant that his expressive speech was 'age appropriate', and SALT were attempting to say so, although his receptive speech was quite severely delayed, he had auditory memory, auditory processing disorder and working memory difficulties. He also speaks with an acquired American accent, and has an unusual voice intonation.

So I believe it is mainly to do with speech. However I know that there are many children with AS who also have brilliant expressive, but poor receptive speech.

I was happy with HFA because of his greater language and comunication difficulties. I have also found that HFA gets more support than AS because a child with AS is assumed to be okay language wise and typically expected to do okay academically.

Also on initial testing by the Ed Psych my son scored a percentile of 93 in some areas (non verbal), and a percentile of 2 in understanding instructions. So there was a huge difference (spiky profile).

Another thing we talked about was obsessions and interests. My son does not have this characteristic at all. He has his own interests, but none of them are to the extent of obsessions. And again the DP said that those with AS typically have these obsessions and areas of interest.

He is now 8 and has improved tremendously.

Infact yesterday he was watching something on TV and said "that was a very funny story, but it wasn't funny for the man it happened to was it?" This seems to suggest to me that he has some theory of mind.

He has also recently been diagnosed with Semantic Pragmatic Speech Disorder.

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Content removed by moderator as it breached forum rules.

 

 

 

Kathryn

Edited by Kathryn

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