The Passionate Mind: How People with Autism Learn

For us, however, sensory perception is experienced as a separate entity and it may not have a natural boundary or border (not be self-limiting). This can mean sensory information keeps coming and can easily overload us.

Ability, or difficulty, is connected to interest. In a social setting an AS individual’s ability can fluctuate depending on sensory stimuli, expectations, interest and available attention and energy resources.

childhood disintegrative disorder

Rett’s disorder,

am concerned if we get caught up in the debate over labels that issues of deeper significance will be missed and we could lose sight of the wood for the trees. So often in AS we are more different than we are alike!

Then again, these issues occur amongst the NT population as well.

difficulty getting, being and staying organised and yet I need obsessively to organise things my way!

Mesibov, Shea and Schopler (2000) agreed with this, but they added ‘the inability to organise oneself’ to the array of difficulties experienced by us as the AS population.

however, this may vary from individual to individual and even vary immensely for the same individual. It is this pattern of uneven skill and variation of skills that is so complementary to an assessment of AS.