The opposite of autism?

[denny]

http://nasw.org/finn/ws.html


(yoinked from nullstr)

Comments

[ludy]

hi i got pionted here by ciphergoth. Although the social skills aaspects of Williomas syndrome do seem like the opposite of autism a lot of the other charicteristic seem exactly them same. I have NLD (non-verbal leraning disability) which is on the autistic spectrum (and i'm aslo dyslexic which is prolly pretty obviuos by now!). I've been described (by people who like me!) as being a mixture of very stupid and very clever - there is a 45 piont diffrense in my verbal and non-verbal IQ scores. A lot of NLD people (and some other kinds of autistic people) have probelms with numbers (personally i'm unusulaly good at maths concepts for an NLD person but make lots of mistakes with basic number handling and sums). NLD and Asperger people are often very good with language (like Williams people but not like some other autistic peopple) but can lack understanding of subtexts. The "cocktail party speach" mentioned in the wiliams sydrom article is often found in austict people when they have grasped the idea of wanting to interact with others but haven't quite got it right yet. Dyspraxia (probelms with co-ordination and visual-spatial perseption) also has a strong overlap with autism and some peoolle include it on the autistic spectrum (i couldn't relabaley tie my shoelaces until i was 26). And althouh Williams syndrome is a specific gentic condiotion which cause very specfic facail features a lot of people on the autsitc spetrum are described as looking "elfin". And i belive (but will have to go and check) that Willisms people are like austistic spectrum people in having big probelms with "central coherence" which is about seeing the big picture instead of all the small details.

I find the austitic=male idea very annoying becauee i'm not male but i am autistic. I think it make turn out to be wrong anyway - whe i was first diagnosed as dyslexic i was told only one in 10 dyslexic people where female - now the offical figure is one in 3. Girls wern't diagnosed because they wre quite rather than disrutive when they had problems and pschologists and teachers who belived dyslexia was largley a male think just wern't looking for dyslexic girls. I think they same will happen with autistic spectrum disorders.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

Whoa, loads of info - thanks for all that. Fascinating stuff.

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was saying that there were a few core similarities; the lack of grasping subtext being the major one.