Asperger's Disorder /Diagnostic Features

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Asperger's Disorder

Diagnostic Features

the essential features of asperger's Disorder are severe and sustained impairment in social interaction  and the development of restricted, repetitive patterns behavior, interests,and activities the disturbance must cause clinically significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning . in contrast to autistic Disorder there are no clinically significant delays or deviance in language acquisition (e.g.,single non-echoed words are used communicatively by age 2 years, and spontaneous communicative phrases are used by age 3 years ) , although more subtle aspects of social communication ( e.g, typical give-and-take in conversation ) may be affected. in addition, during the first 3 years of life, there are no clinically significant delays in cognitive development as manifested by expressing normal curiosity about the environment or in the acquisition of age-appropriate learning skills and adaptive behaviors (other than in social interaction ) . finally, the criteria are not met for another specific pervasive developmental Disorder or for schizophrenia . this condition is also termed Asperger's syndrome

the impairment in reciprocal social interaction is gross and sustained. there may be marked impairment in the use of multiple nonverbal behavior (e.g., eye-to-eye of gaze, facial
expression, body postures, and gestures to regulate social interaction and communication . may be failure to develop peer relationships appropriate to developmental level
that may take different forms at different ages  younger individuals may have little or no interest in friendships / older individuals may have an interest in friendship but lack understanding of the conventions of social interaction