From the website for Education Resources Information Center, something in the abstract from Pragmatic Inferences in High-Functioning Adults with Autism and Asperger Syndrome caught my attention. The research article claims that the researchers were able to investigate differences between high-functioning adults with autistic disorder and Asperger syndrome. How did they know which people in their studies were the high-functioning autistics compared to those matching Asperger syndrome? Here are some of their words:
We carried out a behavioral study on high-functioning adults with autistic disorder (n = 11) and Asperger syndrome (n = 17) and matched controls (n = 28) to investigate whether they are capable of deriving scalar implicatures, which are generally considered to be pragmatic inferences.
The present findings indicate that the combined ASD group was just as likely as controls to derive scalar implicatures, yet there was a difference between participants with autistic disorder and Asperger syndrome, suggesting a potential differentiation between these disorders in pragmatic reasoning. Moreover, our results suggest that verbal intelligence is a constraint for task performance in autistic disorder but not in Asperger syndrome.
My point is that they were able to detect differences between Aspies and auties. Those who can’t discern the differences between those in each category are the ones responsible for complicating and drowning out the results from studies done by those who can (and can do it without even needing to see the genetic differences!).
Please don’t take what’s said in this post as something to debate here on my blog. It’s only an observation being made public to hopefully give readers more to think about.