User:PsychoNerd054/Autism

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This guide is all about the 'tism, as explained by an actual autist.

I'm creating this whole thing so that one can possibly better understand the protagonist of our tale, and some of the other people in his life who have the same "ailment" as he.

Diagnostic Criteria

According to the DSM-5 criteria for autism, the condition is diagnosed if one fits the following three criteria:

1. Difficulties in social emotional reciprocity, including trouble with social approach, back and forth conversation, sharing interests with others, and expressing/understanding emotions.
2. Difficulties in nonverbal communication used for social interaction including abnormal eye-contact and body language and difficulty with understanding the use of nonverbal communication like facial expressions or gestures for communication.
3. Deficits in developing and maintaining relationships with other people (other than with caregivers), including lack of interest in others, difficulties responding to different social contexts, and difficulties in sharing imaginative play with others.

The DSM-5 criteria also requires one to demonstrate at least 2 of the 4 repetitive patterns, interests or behaviors:

1. Stereotyped speech, repetitive motor movements, echolalia (repeating words or phrases, sometimes from television shows or from other people), and repetitive use of objects or abnormal phrases.
2. Rigid adherence to routines, ritualized patterns of verbal or nonverbal behaviors, and extreme resistance to change (such as insistence on taking the same route to school, eating the same food because of color or texture, repeating the same questions); the individual may become greatly distressed at small changes in these routines.
3. Highly restricted interests with abnormal intensity or focus, such as a strong attachment to unusual objects or obsessions with certain interests, such as train schedules.
4. Increased or decreased reactivity to sensory input or unusual interest in sensory aspects of the environment, such as not reacting to pain, strong dislike to specific sounds, excessive touching or smelling objects, or fascination with spinning objects.

Autism as a "Spectrum"

Autism has always been understood as a "spectrum". For the sake of example, we can compare this "spectrum" as akin to something more familiar, such as the color spectrum. Like with the color spectrum, the autism "spectrum" is represented in various ways, accounting for different things.

"High" and "Low" Functioning Autism

When most people think of autism as a "spectrum" or how "autistic" a person is, they think of it in terms of one's "functionality", that being the amount of support that one requires from others to live their life. This scale ranges from "high functioning" to "low functioning". "High functioning" autism is understood to be where they need little to no assistance and actually act no different from an average person. In much more cases however, they're perceived as being so above average in terms of intelligence they can probably find Ϫ thousand to the Ϫ in their heads that makes up for whatever social awkwardness they might have. Those that are perceived as being "low functioning", however, are seen as being so braindead that they absolutely must be kept an eye on at all times as they're on their tablet to make sure they don't bash themselves on the head or crap their pants. However, outside of whatever moral implications may come about from generalizing people as being socially awkward savants or bumbling tards for being autistic alone, or whoever these depictions might offend, this type of scale has severe limitations.

The first of these is how people are typically categorized under this scale. Usually, this type of categorization is discrete, rather than continuous. That is, each of these categories, "high" and "low", take on very specific forms that are applied to every single case of someone being "autistic", typically from what's readily apparent about them. By that point, where the fuck do we put the guy that can't walk, speak coherent sentences, needs his diapers changed, and has to eat and drink everything through a straw, but can do complex analysis in his head? They appear "low-functioning" because they need someone to assist him 24/7 in order to function, but it's also clear they're quite skilled in the field of complex analysis, which requires a ton of other math to understand, which also makes them appear "high functioning" to some extent. Therefore, the next logical step might be to try to put him somewhere in-between these two categories, which we now deem as "extremes".

The second of these is that even in its more "continuous" form, where we talk about someone being "very", "not too" or just "sorta" autistic, this still doesn't fully reflect their mindset or what they struggle with specifically. All this does is again make broad assumptions about what autism is, only now we're putting it on a scale between being a "savant" or a "tard", whatever one chooses those terms to mean precisely. This also doesn't account for the fact that all people can be gifted in some areas but also fall short in others, regardless of if they're autistic or not.

Going back to our color spectrum analogy, I see ranking people by how "high" or "low" functioning they are as just reducing the color spectrum to the primary colors. There's sort of a fundamental idea there of things having color, but it's restricted to just those three categories (red, yellow, and blue), which we know not everything is strictly those colors. You could then mix those colors to get the secondary colors (green, orange, and purple), or mix those colors yet again to get tertiary colors, and continue from there, but that's still not fully reflective of all of the possible colors things can be. By that point, you still also have to account for things like how much of each you mix or other factors like the colors hue, saturation and value. You can also say that some color, say for example burgundy, is "sorta" red or "sorta" purple, but that still doesn't fully explain what "burgundy" is or what colors or how much of each you need to make it.

For these reason, I usually try to avoid calling people "high" or "low" functioning or saying someone is "very" or "sort of" autistic on this wiki in particular, whose point is to portray people as accurately, albeit also as entreatingly, as possible. That doesn't mean I won't occasionally call someone "autistic" for shits and giggles, though. People usually know what one is talking about in that context.