Slowly, very slowly like clouds in a slow motion folks appear for the dinner club. That’s just and update.

But since you give a very detailed bio profile, and some like b. sharp are scientifically inclined to uncover new things…

I think the unemployment has to do with one small thing. Spectrum folks have difficulty telling a lie, even a white lie. And that as we know is fatal in getting a job - the first step being an interview.

Here is an excellent article, you might want to run a separate post. If so, I’d be ever so interested for all the comments, as this puts me a lot of things in a morally interesting and challenging perspective:

people on the spectrum are diagonal opposites to pathological liars who cannot tell but lie. spectrum people on the other hand are unable to lie, due to grey-to-white matter ratio and the role of the pre-frontal cortex. I am sure you’ll find it fascinating.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1504096/posts

Speech therapists traditionally worked with oral dyspraxia (the sort of speech impediments Temple Grandin had in being able to say ‘bah’ but not ‘ball’).

Cognitive and educational psychologists generally work with SPD in those with autism, as traditional speech therapy is more limited there.

This was pooh poohed by the speech pathologist.
I still reckon he has semantic pragmatic disorder..
However , I am no professional.He does fit the criteria though, in my opinion.

I was assessed as psychotic at age 2 in 1965, then still tested for deafness at age 9. I was echolalic since 18 mths and by 9 had a vast repertoire of jingles, songs, advertisements and strings from TV which I used as self directed and later other projected expression.

I developed functional speech between age 9-11 after language was slowed, simplified and gestured for me, however I was nervous of using this new system so experienced some episodes of Selective Mutism as I settled into this clunky system but by age 13 could do litanies and by 17 had around 50% functional speech mixed with 50% of my old ‘Donna Speak’.

I was diagnosed with autism in my 20s. My IQ at that time was under 70, in the mildly mentally retarded range. This was due to severe written and verbal language processing problems and inability to work well visually with meaning. Because of this my diagnosis as an adult was autism, not Aspergers. I also have a diagnosis in adulthood of a visual perceptual disorder and a severe receptive language processing disorder.

I have checked with the psychologist who diagnosed me, a man with 40 years experience diagnosing people on the spectrum and one of Australia’s leading experts, was he sure I didn’t have Aspergers. He confirmed that it was very clear I did not have Asperger’s.

Your friend may understand better if she looks up Semantic Pragmatic Disorder. The test results for these people is significantly different to those with Asperger’s, as is their language history. Most people with autism also have Semantic Pragmatic Disorder. I can function as well as some people with Asperger’s and have some strengths most of them don’t have and some weaknesses many of them don’t have.

Your friend can call me Asperger’s just the same as she can call me a rabbit.
But I am what I am. I am someone with autism who now functions in the mild-moderate range after a vast range of interventions.

I’m not in the severely autistic range but began in the severe-moderate range, moved into the moderate range by mid childhood, then into the mild-moderate range by my teens and adulthood. Perhaps the best way to view me is someone with severe sensory perceptual disorders, co-morbid mood, anxiety and compulsive disorders, gut, immune and metabolic disorders present since early infancy, who responded autistically to these challenges and has treated, managed and found adaptations to that range of challenges so now functions far better than I once did.

Sometimes the world isn’t black and white, it has all kinds of greys too.

… Donna Williams *)

But the strengths and weaknesses are different

so the person with HFA will usually have such significant written and verbal RECEPTIVE processing challenges that they are less likely than most with Asperger’s to work in jobs requiring extensive reading or where they have to follow written or verbal instructions.

Those with significant receptive language problems have difficulty mentalising internally even though they may become good at expressive language and can use external tools to do some complex mentalising.  there’s often also significant difficulty visually processing objects, contexts, faces and situations.
by contrast those with Asperger’s may struggle more with the expression and reading of emotion because the person with language processing disorders has usually learned to compensate by acutely mapping shifts in people’s tone and movements even if they also can’t read facial expression or body language.

There is also less implication of personality in HFA as the diagnosis of autism is based more on language processing disorders than personality features. Where in Asperger’s, it’s often down to the manifestation of personality traits far more.

I can hang out with my Aspie friends but my receptive language processing skills are often too simplistic to sustain complex conversation although, with effort, I can track their speech using objects on the table to ‘peg’ key concepts and order the objects to capture conceptual relationships. At the same time I’m more emotionally expressive than most of my Aspie friends although I tend to appear rather blank when listening or watching due to the receptive processing struggle… again similar ain’t same.

generally I function in the mild-moderate area. But in testing, yes, I didn’t fit Asperger’s because of the significant struggles with receptive written and verbal language.

Language delay alone doesn’t mean language processing disorder. Oral dyspraxia can mean articulation problems delaying speech, Selective Mutism is part of an anxiety disorder and learned dependency can also lead to late speech. Again, similar isn’t same. One of the problems is SPIN. That those who’ve spoken by 3 or 4 years old continue to latch onto this as proof they had autism rather than Asperger’s. A severe receptive language processing disorder doesn’t disappear at 3 or 4, even though it may decrease, and it will still be present on testing an adult with history of LDP in autism.

Donna *)

Would appreciate your thoughts Donna.

“Dr. Grandin is a designer of livestock handling facilities and a Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University. Facilities she has designed are located in the United States, Canada, Europe, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, and other countries. In North America, almost half of the cattle are handled in a center track restrainer system that she designed for meat plants. Curved chute and race systems she has designed for cattle are used worldwide and her writings on the flight zone and other principles of grazing animal behavior have helped many people to reduce stress on thier animals during handling.

She has also developed an objective scoring system for assessing handling of cattle and pigs at meat plants. This scoring system is being used by many large corporations to improve animal welfare. Other areas of research are: cattle temperament, environmental enrichment for pigs, reducing dark cutters and bruises, bull fertility, training procedures, and effective stunning methods for cattle and pigs at meat plants.

She obtained her B.A. at Frankin Pierce College and her M.S. in Animal Science at Arizona State University. Dr. Grandin received her Ph.D in Animal Science from the University of Illinois in 1989. Today she teaches courses on livestock behaviour and facility design at Colorado State Univeristy and consults with the livestock industry on facility design, livestock handling, and animal welfare”.

from http://www.grandin.com/

I was rather surprised to read Temple cited recently as having sensory perceptual disorders. I understood she found scratchy petticoats impossible as a child and struggled to understand her parents’ dinner party chatter when she was 3. But sensory hypersensitivity (however challenging) is about problems of TOLERANCE levels more than sensory perceptual issues are and are world away from being unable to process a face or body as a whole, or have significant meaning deafness so getting meaning from written or verbal communications keeps one with the receptive language processing of a 4 year old. I was tested for deafness at 9 when my family finally understood I was meaning deaf. As an adult I’ve been diagnosed with a severe language processing disorder (in addition to my autism) and a visual perceptual disorder.

Significant face blindness means most people appear interchangeable and feeds social phobia. Being context blind and not seeing objects as a whole until my 20s means I can’t think in pictures or do complex mentalising in my head. Not being able to see people as a whole when up close means I don’t know where touch is coming from so can panic. Sure, if Temple lives that world, shout it from the rooftops honey, but sensory hypersensitivity is totally different to sensory perceptual disorders. Sound isn’t just ‘too loud’, with language processing disorder then after the first 5-10 min a dinner party sounds like a chicken coop with all the voices tumbling and develops a progressive echo chamber effect which freaks out not the ears but the nervous system. It’s a whole different space…. similar ain’t same. It’s like saying that every person who can’t understand speech is deaf… just plain ignorant. And that ignorance can be damaging especially when a qualification in animal handling (animal husbandry, cattle slaughter) is put forward to the general public as DOCTOR because most people in the street will presume a psych doctorate, a medical one or at least zoology… and Temple has done little to clarify that yet I’m sure she knows most will presume that Dr means DOCTOR not PhD in something with no relationship to psych, medicine, neurology etc.

One can have sensory hypersensitivity without significant sensory perceptual disorders (though having sensory perceptual disorders leads to sensory flooding which can mean sensory hypersensitivities as well) so one should talk about what one knows.

Good luck with gluten free. I’m GF/CF and low salicylate. I found the salicylate part fed the attention and visual fragmentation issues and upped tempo on anxiety and bipolar stuff in my case.

you’re so right what you say re diet… its a PERCENTAGE for whom these things make stuff worse. I’m in that, sure you are too, but Temple for example has her level of functioning with no dietary interventions and is doing fine.

you are so right that actual numbers need to happen but most of all we need to stop this idea of autism as ONE thing or they’ll waste funds forever seeking the ONE answer which helps ALL on the spectrum and the fruit salad thing doesn’t work that way.