Another new term

[McGiver]

is she a hero to some people here?

[SovaNu]

she's someone i look up to.

i thought Temple was HFA. she's brillliant.

If you've read her books, she was quite low functioning and non-verbal as a child, but she is brilliant, still.

she's wise and compassionate. that's something i respect more than intelligence or other crap.

[Kiriana]

If you have an IQ above a certain point you're pretty much automatically up from HFA to AS, I think.

I always thought the difference had more to do with early verbal development, which doesn't always correlate with IQ.   Wonder if there's a definitive answer?  I'll have to go poking around and see what I can find out, it's an interesting question!

Our psychologist gave me a similar explanation, but also reminded me that HFA is generally a layman's or conversational term and not a diagnosis. Maybe one of our resident students in the field can clear it up for us.

Yeah, I didn't think HFA was a diagnostic term, just a descriptive one.   Could be wrong though, it's been awhile since I've done heavy duty research.  Though lately, I've been pondering on what exactly "high functioning" means anyway.  Verbal skills?  The ability to hold a job?  To live alone?  Something else?  Is it just one of those things you know when you see it?  Bah, I think I'm sidetracking here, sorry.   

[SovaNu]

i can't hold a job, i can barely keep my environment livable. it's a struggle to keep things from falling into chaos. in that way i'm low functioning. Temple is a genius, she has a specific skill which makes her an expert on things and she must have a good income. it's all relative. it's all unique blends of things. we're all unique and complicated. to brand someone LFA or HFA is one dimensional. people are good at things and not so good at things. people aren't one thing or the other. people are many things.

[DirtDawg]

If you have an IQ above a certain point you're pretty much automatically up from HFA to AS, I think.

I always thought the difference had more to do with early verbal development, which doesn't always correlate with IQ.   Wonder if there's a definitive answer?  I'll have to go poking around and see what I can find out, it's an interesting question!

Our psychologist gave me a similar explanation, but also reminded me that HFA is generally a layman's or conversational term and not a diagnosis. Maybe one of our resident students in the field can clear it up for us.

Yeah, I didn't think HFA was a diagnostic term, just a descriptive one.   Could be wrong though, it's been awhile since I've done heavy duty research.  Though lately, I've been pondering on what exactly "high functioning" means anyway.  Verbal skills?  The ability to hold a job?  To live alone?  Something else?  Is it just one of those things you know when you see it?  Bah, I think I'm sidetracking here, sorry.   

Those are actually really good questions, which can't be answered with any precision or universal applicability. Maybe the discussion deserves its own thread in the advocate area or something.

I know I've posted it a while ago, but I was once referred to as a "success story" by one of the psych team working with my family. It really pissed me off at first, because they had not done anything yet, except ask a thousand questions and had us all do some memory and observation games. They were really complimenting me, because of what they were detecting in my behaviors and how I had learned to deal with it all on my own, but I did not understand that at first.

[DirtDawg]

i can't hold a job, i can barely keep my environment livable. it's a struggle to keep things from falling into chaos. in that way i'm low functioning. Temple is a genius, she has a specific skill which makes her an expert on things and she must have a good income. it's all relative. it's all unique blends of things. we're all unique and complicated. to brand someone LFA or HFA is one dimensional. people are good at things and not so good at things. people aren't one thing or the other. people are many things.

So true, Milla.

 

[Natalia Evans]

Temple is also an autstic savant. Seems like she can draw whatever she can picture and whatever she reads, she just stores it in her library and she can pull that fact out in her head and read it over. I can't do that. That's how she got her job as being a cattle designer.


Is there anyone who thinks there is such thing as low functioning aspies?

I think there is and it be an aspie who can't hold down a job and can't be real independant, can't take care of themselves. There is also such thing as low functioning NTs and that be my ex alright. Anyone can be low functioning.

HFA just means an autistic who can take care of themselves such as living a normal life.


Look at Rain Man, the movie said he was HFA but I disagree. If he was HFA he wouldn't be living in a instution. He be living in a home and taking care of himself with no aides around. But the movie was made in 1988 so what did they know. Doctors still thought autism was childhood schizophrenia back then too. I'm surprised they didn't label me that when I was a baby or it would have been in my records. Perhaps they were smart enough to know autism and schizophrenia isn't the same and they disagreed with that fact in books.

[SovaNu]

there's many kinds of ways to function, SG. i can function highly in some things and not so well in others. it serves no purpose to call someone low functioning.

[Calandale]

Is there anyone who thinks there is such thing as low functioning aspies?

I think there is and it be an aspie who can't hold down a job and can't be real independant, can't take care of themselves. There is also such thing as low functioning NTs and that be my ex alright. Anyone can be low functioning.

HFA just means an autistic who can take care of themselves such as living a normal life.

I'm what would be considered pretty damned low functioning,
but definitely don't fit the requirements for Autism.

But, there are a lot of other (non-aspie) problems with
me.

[DirtDawg]

there's many kinds of ways to function, SG. i can function highly in some things and not so well in others. it serves no purpose to call someone low functioning.

Yeah, me, too. I can usually hold my own very well in a one on one conversation, in person, but don't call me on the phone or you'll think I'm half asleep or that I hate you.

I quoted it out of one of Temple Grandin's books here somewhere, but she describes in detail what someone with picture memory and processing delays actually goes through on a telephone. Sure all the different steps to hearing, interpreting, identifying, matching known pictures in your mind, and then translating back to speech happen in an instant, but there is a lot of work and concentration going on during the process. It takes a lot of energy.

I remember in the Rainman movie, his doctor called him High Functioning, because he was verbal and could be comfortable creating his own routines, etc. I doesn't always take much to be happy.

[SovaNu]

yeah and happiness is most important.

i like speaking on the phone with my dad but pretty much anyone else it's really hard to do that with. it's hard for me to talk to even close friends on the phone and impossible to talk to strangers. calling the doctor has gone from hard to not happening. it's all social anxiety and things with me though. i don't like talking with friends like that cuz i can't see them and i can't see if they're getting tired of talking to me, so i dunno when to end the conversation. i always hate trying to end a phone conversation.

are phone convos hard for you? do you have a picture memory? what the hell is a picture memory?

[Natalia Evans]

Picture memory is remembering things in pictures than seeing them in words. My memories are in pictures. It's impossible to think in words and not see a picture.

[DirtDawg]

That's a fairly good description, but it would be a mistake to try and think that it represents the classic "Photographic Memory."  An impressionistic rendering might be a better analogy, because as much as they say say that autistics have no empathy, show little emotion and all that crap, the memory pictures I keep are influenced by my state at the time the memory was formed and how I link these pictures together in an effort to be coherent is also affected by my current mood or stress and probably many other things that I will never conceive of. Some ideas are more dimensional, though, and I think of a clay-mation world that I can walk into in my mind and move things around, reshape them and control them.

The old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words may be true, but the reverse is also true. Many words are overwhelmingly complex or abstract and cause even more delay in processing, mainly due to the flood of imagery they can induce. I actually enjoy those words and, when I use them, I often wonder if anyone else is moved or stymied by them.

[Pyraxis]

Can you give some examples?

[El]

I think there is and it be an aspie who can't hold down a job and can't be real independant, can't take care of themselves. There is also such thing as low functioning NTs and that be my ex alright. Anyone can be low functioning.

QFT, and