What is Asperger Syndrome?

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Many people across the world are unfamiliar with disorders associated with autism. Some people do not even know what autism actually is. Asperger’s Syndrome is one perplexing disorder, of countless, that needs to be acknowledged. Although it is one of the more well-known disorders, an understanding of Asperger’s is far from common knowledge. There is an abundance of misconceptions and people unaware of what Asperger Syndrome actually is. Being uncertain about the characteristics of a person with Asperger’s allows people to go through life not understanding the disorder itself and people who have it.

Asperger’s is one disorder of many in the Autism Spectrum. The Autism Spectrum includes early infantile autism, childhood autism, Kanner’s autism, high-functioning autism, atypical autism, pervasive developmental disorder, childhood disintegrative disorder, and Asperger’s (“American Psychiatric Association,” 2013). All disorders found in the spectrum are neurodevelopmental disorders. These types of disorders deal with impairments of development and growth of the brain and nervous system (Lord & Bishop, 2010). Each disorder found in the spectrum may have similarities, but are different from one another too. Asperger’s was not a part of the Autism Spectrum until the latest update of DSM-5 in 2013. It was classified as its own category, but now is an Autism Spectrum Disorder, or ASD (Macintosh & Dissanayake, 2004). The moving of Asperger’s Syndrome into the Autism Spectrum took place because of the various similarities to ASDs.

Dr. Hans Asperger was the first to describe Asperger’s Syndrome, also known as AS, in 1944. He explained that AS causes clumsiness, poor motor skills, and an inability to walk or run smoothly (Miyahara, Tsujii, ...

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...ih.gov/disorders/asperger/detail_asperger.htm

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