Asperger Syndrome is a neurodevelopmental disorder that’s characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction & nonverbal communication & repetitive patterns of behavior & interests.
Asperger syndrome is found by an Austrian pediatrician named Hans Asperger in 1944, and this part of ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) is characterized by a struggle at forming friendships, difficulties in understanding others’ gestures/feelings, repetitive routines, peculiarities in speech & language, problems with nonverbal communication, engaged in 1-sided conversations about his/her interests and they’re occasionally clumsy & uncoordinated motor movement, and it affects around 37.2 million people (0.5%) globally, and it’s more commonly found in boys than girls (girls often diagnosed at later age).
This disorder starts at infancy/early childhood and lasts through adulthood like normal autism. Unlike normal autism, however, someone affected by this disorder has no significant delay in cognitive development/language. Fortunately, someone with this part of high-functioning autism grows up to live healthy & productive lives with treatments & early interventions, and able to live independently.
Most people with AS want to socialize but they have a hard time succeeding at getting friends, and they often interact better with someone older/younger than with someone in their age.
Like mentioned before, AS differs from normal autism in which the person affected by this syndrome has strong verbal language skills & intellectual ability, characterized by difficulties with social interactions, restricted interests, desire for sameness, distinctive strengths, and they stand firm in what they think.
People with AS are known for their remarkable focus & persistence, high attention to detail & aptitude for recognizing patterns, but they have hyper/hyposensitivity to sensory input (lights, sound, taste, etc), difficulties in conversation reciprocity & nonverbal conversation skills (distance, tone, volume, etc), uncoordinated movements/clumsiness, anxiety & depression, which vary widely among people.
To deal with this, there are some methods to aid them, such as cognitive behavioral therapy to address anxiety & other personal challenges, social skills class to help with conversational skills & understanding social cues, speech therapy to help their voice control, physical & occupational therapy to improve coordination, and psychoactive medicines to help with anxiety, depression & Attention Deficit & Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
At first glance, people with AS often seem like neurotypical/non-autistic people that behave differently, and also appear aloof & uninterested with others. People with this disorder also want to fit in with others but they don’t know how to because they’re socially awkward, display few facial expressions, don’t understand conventional social rules & the use of gestures, jokes, or sarcasm, lack empathy, limited eye contact, & unengaged in conversation.
They often feel detached from the world around them and have difficulties at finding a life partner because of their poor social skills, because the complexity & inconsistency of the social world is challenging for them.
1 of the most recognizable characteristics of someone affected by this syndrome is having borderline obsession in their interest, in which they collect categories of things, proficient in knowledge categorization of information, have a strong memory, & work things logically.
They also have an intense focus in their area of interest, sometimes with an encyclopedic level of knowledge, and they’re often unaware of someone’s attempts to change the topic of conversation, which causes difficulties in social interactions.
In terms of interests, someone with AS also wants to know everything about his/her topic of interest and talks little else outside his/her interests, in which if his/her special interests can lead to a profitable career, satisfaction in life, & success in employment related to his/her special interests if it leads to something useful.
Other strengths of someone with this syndrome also include increased ability to focus on details, increased capacity to persevere in specific interests without being swayed by others’ opinions, able to work independently, recognition of patterns & original way of thinking.
Examples of someone with AS involve Peter Howson that uses his obsession with painting to express himself, Satoshi Tajiri, which uses his special interests in bugs & video games to create the Pokemon game series, Abed Nadir from the Community TV series, using his special interests in films & movies to relate with the surrounding world around him, & Owen Suskind, with special interests on Disney cartoons to communicate & relate with others, persevere through life & calm himself down which later developed into a movie called Life, Animated.
I’m also affected with AS, in which I have a special interest in cars with almost encyclopedic knowledge in them, such as brand origins, engine configurations (ex. flat 6, V10, etc), engine codes (ex. F20C in a Honda S2000, 2GR-FE in 3.5 V6 Toyotas/Lexuses), market-specific models (ex. Toyota Sienna minivan for the US market, Renault Kwid for the Indian market), & more, and use that as my drive to pick Industrial Engineering as my major for college, coping mechanism to calm myself down, & base of most of my hobbies, such as reading automobile articles, collecting miniature cars, etc.
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