Collecting Symptoms

[Willow]

Hi guys..and girls,

I would like your help in collecting a list of symptoms of Aspergers Syndrome. Please fill this in and post it back as a comment, for ease please can you just list symptoms rather than saying lots and lots of extra info I'm doing research and I need to know what the symptoms are across a lot of people, so I can figure out the most common and which are more common in girls. You can also email me: [email protected]



Gender:

Diagnosis:

Symptoms exclusive to Aspergers Syndrome:

 

[MadGiraffe]

Oh, cool! I'd be very interested in your results actually and hope you share your ideas on this subject. Analyzing the workings of autism has also become one of my obessions recently, though trough circumstance I've taken a different route. I might post some of my findings sooner or later here on the forums once I've compiled and construed everything.

Gender: Male.

Diagnosis: PDD-NOS, but leaning against Aspergers, though not a typical Aspergian (mild, partly self-treated). Also diagnosed with ADD, which is more dominant.
Secondary: Intrapsychologically conflicted (misconnected Id, ego and super-ego); Secondary Narcism (mild and selective Narcistic Disorder)

Symptoms exclusive to Aspergers Syndrome:
-Occasionally mistaking or not recognising people's intentions
-Limited socio-emotional capacity and desire (less intimate/close relationships)
-Non-intuitive reactions to other people's emotions, inclination to distance myself from them not knowing how to handle them; emotionally and physically distant
-Preferation to look at something more objectively than subjectively. (this also influences my openness and honesty, insulting people unintentionally)
-Obsessive and neurotic traits (something both empowered and undermined by my ADD)
-(Visual) hypersensitivity, i.e. :dislike for prolonged exposure to strobing and dancing lights, longer adjustment period to rapid luminosity changes in the environment, less ability to cope with visual 'wrongness' (abstract).
-Archaic and formal use of language, sometimes using words from the wrong language adapting them to the currently used language.
-Minor stims when in an uncomfortable situation or emotionally distraught
-Increased aptitude to pick up new practical skills and understanding how things work


Childhood symptoms:
-Walking on toes often
-Closed off and solitary, non communicative
-Watching static on tv for large amounts of time
-Arranging of objects in neat lines or piles, by shape, size and/or colour.

edit: Oh and it might be prudent to note that the majority of the symptoms I've stated here are the ones I can originate directly from autism (apart from a few, like the language use and objectification preference, I'm not certain of those either way), and were not developed partly due cause of the autism and experiences. Like lowered self esteem, presenting myself differently to strangers and other behaviourisms I've developed to cope with my autism.
Post-edit:whoops forgot some things

 

[shinigami]

Gender: Female
Diagnosis: Asperger’s Syndrome
Symptoms:
-Difficulty making eye contact, social anxiety, social awkwardness
-Unable to understand jokes or sarcasm, take what a person says literally. Tendency to insult people unknowingly.
-Monotonous voice, difficulty in expressing emotions, difficulty in making appropriate facial expressions, difficulty understanding a person’s emotions or facial expressions
-Very clumsy
-Sensitive to light, find certain situations overwhelming such as going to malls, big stores, or any place with a lot of people or a lot of lights and noise, very sensitive to sudden noises or specific noises (something most people do not think is loud happens to be extremely loud and noisy to me)
-Obsess about particular things and can become very absorbed in them, will become angry if interrupted in the midst of my concentration – though I do not typically show this I do intensely feel it. Will not shut up about my obsessions when talking to someone I'm comfortable with.
-I need things to be organized and clean and tend to get obsessive about this. I tend to stick to my routines and cannot handle change too well.
-Freakishly good at certain things such as memorizing, recognizing patterns, puzzles, patterns. My brain sees answers or patterns within seconds. I also read extremely fast. I can see errors of any kind in pages of code, they just stand out to me. Amazing at fixing things also.
-Being around more than one person frustrates me. Small talk frustrates me.
-I've never cared about things many people seem to.

Sorry that’s a lot, but I hope you do let us know what you come up with.

 

[krisi]

Gender: Female

Diagnosis: is a label which creates expecations and self-fulfilling prophecies. (My physician commented that I may have AS and gave me a referral for an eval, but I chose not to go for a full psyciatric evaluation, mainly for the aformentioned reason).

Symptoms exclusive to Aspergers Syndrome:
Language and communication:
-Early developed with a wide vocabulary
-overly formal language (following "polite rules" all the time even in informal settings)
-difficulty initiating communication
-difficulty relating to peers
-difficulty with more subtle pragmatics.
-somewhat unvaried language structure between contexts
-difficulty with verbal turn-taking (sometimes I monologue, sometimes I don't know when someone is waiting for me to talk)
-difficulty knowing when and how long to make eye contact, not so much difficulty with the actual act unless it is with an unfamiliar person.
-difficulty responding to others' nonverbal cues.
-difficulty organizing and verbalizing a response.
-difficutly presenting the correct facial expression with the correct emotion on my own face.
-difficulty understanding sarcasm.

Sensory needs:
-Tactile-sensitive (I have difficulty with different textures of clothing, I need and often want tight hugs, I need to feel objects in my environment)
-Auditory-defensive (loud sounds HURT)
-Stim behaviors: hand-flapping, smelling play-doh, vocal stims, occasional rocking/self-scratching.

Other:
-When I transition between routines, I feel disoriented.
-I have poor fine motor skills. (example: terrible handwriting)
-I have poor gross motor skills. (example: difficulty coordinating my body to perform simple dance steps)
-anxiety when talking with unfamiliar peers.
-I often feel "stuck" on an idea and repeat myself over and over regarding that one idea.
-I often get "stuck" on my obsessions.
-my obsessions tend to be different than the interests of my peers, and they tend to be very intense for periods of several weeks to several months.


I'm sure I forgot some, but that's all I have time for right now. Good luck with your research! (I hope this post was at least remotely helpful)

EDIT: Wow, if this was the only post of mine that someone read, they would probably doubt that I am able to live independently (which I do, more or less quite successfully, but the "less" portion is more due to the fact that I have a heavy courseload at school than any of my autistic traits). The picture painted when one highlights primarily their difficulties and minimizes their strenghts is so different from one's typical self-concept, even if they do not have positive self-esteem.

 

[krisi]

Hey Willow!

I got some really good information last night from an OT who came to one of my classes as a guest speaker. I think we could use it to collect information and make the data for your research easier to analyze.

What do you think?

 

[umbrellabeach]

Gender: Female

Diagnosis: Asperger's Syndrome

Symptoms exclusive to Aspergers Syndrome: Difficulty in social interaction, social awkwardness, intense interests and obsessions, repetitive movements and stimming, the tendency to preoccupy myself with parts of objects, and to follow a routine every day, clumsiness... all the classics, I think. XD

 

[spastigirl]

Gender: F

Diagnosis: not yet

Symptoms exclusive to Aspergers Syndrome:
Rigid logical thinking
Difficulty with intuition and observation (very definitely an auditory learner; finding it difficult to draw inferences from visual cues)
Weakness in practical imagination (can imagine things without any ability to imagine or work towards a likely or desirable course of events)
Weakness in understanding people very different from myself
Weakness in motor control; clumsiness, balance problems, lack of confident spatial judgement
Very perseverative
Comparative strength in verbal and abstract reasoning
Excellent at very precise (not emotionally-based) literary criticism
Fairly rational, but aware that absolute rationality is probably impossible for ape descendants.
Very strong preference for formal and/or front-facing contexts as opposed to fluid and responsive contexts. This is probably my equivalent of change-aversion.
Can understand emotions but only directly expressed in words.
Can be surprised by and oblivious of own emotions as well as those of others.
Can pick up emotions and cues far better verbally than by trying to follow gesture, facial.expression, or the information carried by clothing style. Unusually good (for an Aspie) at picking up sarcasm, irony, humour or emphasis conveyed in words. As a child, did have instances of Aspie literalism.
Poor planning, probably an executive function deficit.
Tendency to get things wrong by 'misfiring' the steps of a process.

Another possibility is NVLD, but that just seems to me to describe a subset of people with Asperger's Syndrome who are very verbally-oriented and have an auditory learning style in place of the more-common (for AS) visual