“My son is on the severe end of the autism spectrum.”
“We’re all a little autistic– it’s a spectrum.”
“I’m not autistic but I’m definitely ‘on the spectrum.'”
If only people knew what a spectrum is… because they are talking about autism all wrong.
Let’s use the visible spectrum as an example.
As you can see, the various parts of the spectrum are noticeably different from each other. Blue looks very different from red, but they are both on the visible light spectrum.
Red is not “more blue” than blue is. Red is not “more spectrum” than blue is.
When people discuss colours, they don’t talk about how “far along” the spectrum a colour is. They don’t say “my walls are on the high end of the spectrum” or “I look best in colours that are on the low end of the spectrum.”
But when people talk about autism they talk as if it were a gradient, not a spectrum at all.
People think you can be “a little autistic” or “extremely autistic,” the way a paint colour could be a little red or extremely red.
In fact, one of the distinguishing features of autism is what the DSM-V calls an “uneven profile of abilities.” There’s a reason people like to say that “if you have met one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism.” Every autistic person presents slightly differently.
That’s because autism isn’t one condition. It is a collection of related neurological conditions that are so intertwined and so impossible to pick apart that professionals have stopped trying.
The autism spectrum looks more like this:
All autistic people are affected in one way or another in most or all of these boxes – a rainbow of traits.
If you only check one or two boxes, then they don’t call it autism– they call it something else.
For example, if you ONLY struggle with communication, then they call that social communication disorder.
If you ONLY have problems with body movement/control then that is called dyspraxia or developmental coordination disorder.
If you ONLY have sensory processing issues then that is sensory processing disorder.
But if you have all of the above and more, they call it autism.
You can see how ridiculous it seems, therefore, when someone says “we’re all a little autistic” because they also hate fluorescent lights or because they also feel awkward in social situations. That’s like saying that you are dressed “a little rainbowy” when you are only wearing red.
Having sensory processing issues doesn’t make you “a little autistic.” It makes you someone with sensory processing problems. Autistic people will understand your struggles and welcome you as a fellow neurodivergent cousin, but that’s it.
But in order for a person to be considered autistic, they must have difficulty in multiple categories spanning the spectrum. Diagnosis depends on evidence that you do span the spectrum in observable ways.
Some commonalities are less obvious and are not required for diagnosis but are almost universally-reported by autistic people.
Each autistic person is affected strongly enough in one or more categories for it to be disabling in some way. But each person’s dominant colour palette may look different.
Here are some examples of how autism could manifest in three different people.
Person One
Person Two
Person Three
As you can see, all three of these hypothetical autistics show classic signs of autism, and yet they all seem very different from one another.
Which one is the “most” autistic?
Person One would probably be described as “aspie” or “high-functioning,” even though their monotropic mindset might cause executive function problems and make it hard to live and work independently.
Person Two is the type of person who is often described as “severely autistic” since they cannot speak and do not appear to understand what goes on around them. However, people like Carly Fleischmann and Ido Kedar have taught us that in fact they are very socially aware and understand pragmatic speech quite well.
Carly’s interview style in her Youtube show Speechless, for example, is extremely witty and flirtatious in a way that many an “aspie” would be unable to imitate.
If the only thing stopping this person from being witty, social, and vivacious is a motor-control problem, then are they truly “more” autistic than Person One?
Person Three might be able to be independent in adulthood if given the stimulation and accommodations they require in order to feel comfortable and be able to learn. But they might be held back through childhood as parents and teachers try to force them to sit still and be quiet and learn in conventional ways, which might result in increasingly worse episodes of self-harm.
All three of these people are disabled in some way.
People who can speak aloud and have reasonable control over their motor processing are often called “high-functioning,” and yet these autistics often struggle with employment, relationships, and executive function.
My doctor recently referred to my autism is “mild.” I gently pointed to my psychologist’s report which stated that my executive dysfunction as being greater than 99th percentile.
“That means I am less functional than 99% of people. Does that seem mild to you?” I asked her.
But, you see, I can speak, and I can look people in the eyes, so they see my autism as “mild.” My autism affects those around me mildly but my autism does affect me severely.
There is no question that those who suffer from severe neuromotor difficulties are extremely disabled, and I am not in any way comparing myself to them.
In fact, I am specifically asking people to stop comparing me to them. It does them a disservice to assume that they have what I have, only worse.
It is this assumption that dehumanizes people like Ido Kedar and Carly Fleischmann. It is this assumption that leads to them and many like them being treated as unthinking, unfeeling, and unhearing. It is this assumption that drives them to beat their heads against the wall in frustration.
If they have what I have, but worse, then they must be so very autistic that they can’t function at all. They must have worse interpersonal skills, worse information processing, worse social awareness.
But that isn’t true at all.
Not only was my mind fully present and understanding everything, but I read fluently. I thought of retorts, jokes and comments all day long in my head. Only no one else knew.
So, I was talked to like a toddler, not given a real education, and kept bored and sad.
-Ido Kedar, Vista del Mar Autism Conference
Don’t do it.
Don’t assume that an autistic person is so very autistic that they can’t even hear or understand you. Don’t assume that they cannot read just because they cannot use the toilet. Don’t assume that I am not disabled just because I can look you in the eyes and chat with you about the weather.
We have uneven skill sets.
Temple Grandin is unable to read people, thinks visually, speaks, and needs no 1:1 support to get on with her life. I am her opposite. I have great insight into people, think in words, can’t speak to save my life, and need 1:1 help.
-Ido Kedar, “Spectrum or Different?” May 2016
-Ido Kedar, “Spectrum or Different?” May 2016
Ido Kedar does not have a more severe version of Temple Grandin’s autism or my own. His skill set is totally different.
My neuromotor difficulties are limited to burning myself while cooking dinner, or stumbling and falling on a walk. Ido Kedar’s neuromotor difficulties, on the other hand, mean that his body often walks itself right out of the room without his permission.
Yet Ido Kedar could probably blow my pragmatic language skills out of the water.
Does that mean we have nothing in common?
No, based on what he has written, I can see that we actually have many things in common.
As autistic people, we both know how it feels to lose oneself in a good stim, how it feels to forget to look at someone’s eyes, and how it feels to need prompting to start a task. We both struggle with anxiety and wonder how it feels to be the kind of person who moves through life effortlessly.
We both span the spectrum in one way or another.
But beyond those things, our situations are different and our needs are different.
What people like Ido Kedar need is an occupational therapist and maybe physiotherapist to help them get control of their body movements. They need someone to help them develop skill with a letter board and an iPad so they can finally express their thoughts and feelings.
Instead, they are often infantilized, institutionalized, or spend years being forced to work on their ABC’s when they would love to get their hands on a science textbook.
I, on the other hand, have always been recognized as being intelligent. Instead, I struggle to have my difficulties be recognized. What I need is someone to support me– to cook, to clean, to organize– to help me recover when tasks have gotten larger and more complicated than I can process. Ido Kedar longs for independence while I long for someone to depend on.
The system fails both of us, but in very different ways.
So please stop assuming that one kind of autism is “more autistic” than other kinds of autism.
Red isn’t “more spectrum” than green or blue. Apples aren’t “more fruit” than oranges. That’s not how it works.
The visibility of an autism trait doesn’t necessarily predict what that person can and cannot do or what supports they need most.
I shouldn’t be processing human speech, according to some. I shouldn’t be writing my thoughts. I shouldn’t even have thoughts. Well, I say, go listen to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and imagine writing it deaf and try to be a little humble about the brain’s unknown capacities.
Ido Kedar – March 2019, http://www.idoinautismland.com
Don’t assume that a non-speaking autistic who doesn’t react to your presence in the room is unaware of the conversation.
Don’t assume that someone is not really autistic just because they make eye contact with you and can chat about the weather.
Don’t assume that a fluently-talkative autistic person is capable of processing what you have just said to them.
Don’t assume anything about an autistic person.
For seventy years (at least), people have been making assumptions about autistic people based on outward behaviour. Even the diagnostic criteria for autism is based on what is easily observable by an onlooker. They think that the stranger we act, the “more autistic” we are.
We are asking you to stop.
Ask us what we can and cannot do.
Even if it doesn’t look as though we can understand.
If you enjoyed this article, consider buying her a diet pepsi: https://ko-fi.com/cllynch
312 Responses
Thank you for sharing your very insightful frustrations. I must admit I am one of those uneducated people who have been misinformed about the use of the word “spectrum”.
“If you ONLY have problems with body movement/ control then that is called dyspraxia” As a dyspraxic and on behalf of other dyspraxics I would like to point out that this far over simplifies Dyspraxia, it’s not purely a movement/ body control problem it is SOOOOOO much more. I will be sharing this with a few Facebook contacts who will probably have something more to say.
I know and I apologize for the over-simplification but I didn’t want to go too off topic. I mostly wanted to make the point that many conditions share autism features but are not called autism because they don’t check as many boxes. I’d be happy if you wanted to add your comments clarifying dyspraxia for those interested. I think there are many undiagnosed dyspraxic people, just as there are many undiagnosed autistic people.
“many conditions share autism features but are not called autism because they don’t check as many boxes.”
Reasonably recently some diagnoses of ADD and ADHD have been augmented by recognition that the autistic is in play in individuals to whom those former diagnoses are being applied; which makes sense to me regards my understanding of those three developmental forms.
Autism and ADHD are very closely related and definitely overlap quite often.
“You should read Terra Vance’s article on autistic emotions. Autistic people prefer intrinsic reward over external motivations like fear of punishment or hope of reward.”
Years back when I was struggling to forge a personal frame of reference on the autistic. I used a computer metaphor.
Back in the day the 486 chip was a vast improvement on the 386 chip. Something of the order of change of Henry Ford’s Model T displacing horses in early 20th century America.
I came to see the 386 as representing the clunky cognitive processing of the collective: so the sensing I could share with non-autistic others; the kind of brain processing you would be called upon to use if studying a discipline. The 486 then represented the far far larger body of sensing that was dealt with across far more powerful emotional processing; so all the sensing that could not be much shared with the collective across cognitive exchange. Emotion then richer and faster than cognition by a huge order of difference.
So emotion becomes the primary plane in autistic development and occurrence. What you then say of emotion makes every sense.
What an empowering string of helpful ideas and contributions. This really helps me as a SEN teacher. 1 query. I find the orthodox ideas of offering students with ASD (I wish the D was erased!) Which are structure, order, consistent, tight rules don’t work for some Aspie kids who kick against consequences. I find they (perhaps with pathological demand avoidance PDA) do better with some choice, ownership and autonomy. It’s a lonely struggle to win them this in a system that says tighter. Anyone agree and even any ideas how to advance my view? Thanks
You should read Terra Vance’s article on autistic emotions. Autistic people prefer intrinsic reward over external motivations like fear of punishment or hope of reward.
This has been my experience. A task or directive has to have meaning in my internal world. It has to fit into a larger concept of What I’m Doing, otherwise it feels arbitrary and therefore optional.
very interesting perspective. I am an educational psychologist and if you were told your executive functioning was at the 99th percentile rank, it means your skills are better than 99 percent of the general population. If you had a percentile rank of 1, then your skills would be considered better than 1 percent of the general population.
Hillary- the article mentioned executive “dysfunction”
interesting, I am guessing then it was a rating scale where you respond to questions, then you were rated yourself as having executive dysfunction at the 99th percentile rank. A direct assessment, using an assessment tool like the D-KEFS, would have given you the inverse results, if you did well you would have a 99th percentile rank. I wondered if maybe you were misunderstood about one of your strengths! Great article!!!
It was the BRIEF-A. I was in 99th percentile in 3 categories, 97 in another, 98 in another, >99 in one… High scores on the BRIEF-A are not good and my assessor’s comments reflect this.
The article is excellent but functioning labels are ableist and the website name as “aspergian” is a functioning label and based on an out dated diagnosis generated from the name of a Nazi Sympathizer who used those functioning labels to determine who was worthy of living versus which of us were “too autistic”.
I won’t share or subscribe to a blog that uses such a name even if the content is good.
Damien, while we won’t try to coax you to stay and encourage you to go elsewhere, we have strong views about the name and the site was coined as an homage to our community and not the man, and as a rebellion against misinformation, against pathologies, against groupthink, and against the blind complacency and acceptance of an autism mom’s purposefully-misleading book of propaganda.
You can educate yourself by reading our about page and by reading this recent and more accurate portrayal of Hans Asperger.
Your righteous indignation isn’t doing any good for our community. I hope that the hurting and broken autistic people out there full of internalized ableism and shame from being born to be abused and misunderstood land in the safety and warmth of our doorstep where they will be folded into the community under our protective awning before reaching the exclusionary, haughty, and unforgiving hostility of yours.
As they say in the vernacular, “Bye, Felicia.”
right read it and internalized ablism is ugly so won’t support say by Felicia all you like but ignoring the voice of someone who is Autistic and talking down to them like you did shows your true face. tone policing me is no better than the autism moms you speak of. I am not being hostile I am being honest.
Ignoring the voices of autistic people because they use the word aspie is ableism. I’m not ignoring you. I’m dismissing your concern as something unfounded and a reflection of thought policing and anti-acceptance rhetoric
Now I’m being accused of ablism because I reject an ablism including terms like aspie. The good thing is I don’t need you to validate me, your intent on remaining correct and projecting yourself back at me while shutting me and Autistic people put doesn’t bother me anymore. Have a nice day,
You do realize we’re all autistic here, right? You’re the one who came to an autistic operated site existing for the express purpose of combating ableism and said you can’t support it. Okay. No one is asking you to. We’ll keep fighting the good fight.
Of course I know this is an Autistic ran site I came from a facebook group for Autistic Adults where we were sharing your articles and discussing them. Just as I said myself that I am Autistic. Aspie Supremacy is a thing and this entire time your responses to me have been insulting and filled with Aspie supremacy. The funny thing is I spoke to another Autistic Artist over their name and they weren’t defensive or Angry, They explained calmly and rationally and I went and shared their work and Liked their page. So yes fight that fight its already obvious that losing Autistic readers isn’t a concern You have. After all your “Bye Felicia” said as much.
Now you’re personally saying that I am filled with aspie supremacy? You came here not asking questions but declaring definitively you would not be willing to show support and making accusations.
There’s no supremacy here. You want to talk down to people and for them to show you humility before you can see eye to eye with them? That’s not going to happen. You’re not willing to judge us by our fruits. That’s fine. You don’t have to.
also I’m not part of your “community” as I am Autistic. Your doorstep isn’t warm or welcoming because of your name it was why I wouldn’t read the article initially and why many others I know voiced misgivings of this page. You are hostile toward me an autistic person don’t lie about being welcoming.
You understand that you are addressing autistic people, right? 100% of the contributors at the Aspergian are autistic. There are zero NTs involved at any level here. So you are being hostile at us as autistic people too.
Whatever you feel about the name, if you gave us a chance or read our about page you would see that we are passionately anti-ableist, anti-functioning labels, anti-aspie supremacy etc etc etc.
None of us are paid here. Don’t want to support us? That’s fine. Don’t read or donate. But we are autistic too and our feelings matter too.
I’m glad you approve of my article. Thank you for giving it a chance.
funny that’s not how the reply felt
It was dismissive, it tone policed, and clings to a label that places this superior to autistic people. I don’t have the spoons to continue this conversation. I read the page, and I disagreed with the “about” it choose to cling to a loaded name and the reply talked down to someone who voiced concern. This isn’t just your feelings but the feelings of other Autistic people reading here. But I’m done here after all the reply made clear that I wasn’t welcome so again I’m not “your community” I’m autistic not aspie not any other label and I don’t feel up further for this debate.
DamienSkyetheshadeofwriting C.L. Lynch and others. The tension and disagreement embedded and expressing-themselves in this particular strand of conversation, seem to me generically and inevitably involved in progressing autistic understanding and inclusion and liberation.
It seems to me that these tensions and what stems from them in terms of activity and interaction, are sui generis part and parcel of the autistic that has to be grappled with.
What all contributors to this particular strand of conversation did heartfelt say and express and reveal, stands valid and legitimate, and needing to be heard and understood affirmatively.
What we need to do as an autistic affirming community, it seems to me (so just one individual’s view), is invest in what enables us to more and more affirm what is expressing the autistic. That is all of the autistic.
My development, from as far back as I can remember, and again for reasons just to do with me, have seen me giving up endeavours of self, in order to allow and understand the other. What saw me doing that was intrinsically autistic, in the sense that I was naively and ferally making use of frames of reference that an immediately contextual collective would reflexively reject as invalid and illegitimate. Even when working professionally this autistic affirming approach saw my frames of reference rejected by more socially-grounded colleagues. I was tolerated because I was effective, but was really seen as the fool on the hill.
I can see something of the individual circumstance out of which each of the contributors of this strand of conversation are coming from, and each to me appears to validly and legitimately represent the autistic as I understand that matter at the heart of our existence.
Forgive me if my intrusion offends.
Thanks for sharing that paper, Terra, I’ve added it to my ‘to read’ list.
I just want to say that I love this piece as a dead on description of the spectrum and why “functioning labels” are such nonsense! I shared this to my page and truly hope it goes viral!!
This is an awesome article and a great read. We’ve been printing this one up and using it at the schools my son attends. ⬇️
https://the-art-of-autism.com/understanding-the-spectrum-a-comic-strip-explanation/
That’s fantastic!
Thank you so much for your insight! It has been so hard trying to explain the behaviours of my son and husband (diagnosed on the same day!) to family and friends and educators. I find most people (even parents and grandparents) can’t comprehend their contrasting strengths and weaknesses. I will share this article with anyone who cares to read it. Thanks again!
i am from England .i take part in a lot lot research.people never see the every day effects .i have aspergers
and m.e .long list health issues . migraines BOTH Bladder /Bowel problems
i do a blog .http;//mark-kent.webs.com
twitter,supersnooper
Linkedin,AutismDad
Most health care professionals we’ve encountered have always put forward the ‘gradient’ theory – so, if they’ve grasped it wrong, they’re the ones ‘mis-educating the parents, carers etc. I myself like the idea of each colour/trait having ITS OWN gradient, as that seems to fit with the various neurodivergent people I know or I am.
I would just add that definitions like this do not create reality. They just attempt to explain it.
Coby. You make an important point. It’s also the case that definitions create or mediate what people take to be reality. Perhaps some definitions attempt to explain what yet other definitions have previously brought about.
For example a circumstance has been brought about by the definitions that our collective has applied to those we currently view as ASD (or autistic). From out of the experiencing of an autistic grouping has emerged the concept.definition of neurodiversity; or at least we are choosing to apply it. That application then has two broad intentions: firstly, the intention to better understand and explain the autistic; secondly, the intention to change the definitions a contextual collective takes recourse to.
I agree. I really have very little patience for lateral violence within the autistic community. Lateral violence has been used to divide groups by the forces in power since time immemorial and I hate that the alt right is succeeding in dividing us.
To me, the truly autistic attitude is to unite in our differences, rather than do what allistics do and cling to those who are identical to ourselves.
“To me, the truly autistic attitude is to unite in our differences, rather than do what allistics do and cling to those who are identical to ourselves.”
That is a fulcrum for a compass we could use in proceeding. The contributions stemming from the autistic and the social/societal (allistic) loci then able to be seen as being in potentially fruitful tension.
Absolutely the best explanation of the spectrum I have read to date. Well played.
Thank you! I wish my mother and my occupational therapist understood English so that I could educate them with the help of your article. STOP ASSUMING! In my opinion, thin-slice judgment is the worst symptom of Neurotypicality.
https://the-art-of-autism.com/understanding-the-spectrum-a-comic-strip-explanation/
They have Spanish and French versions too.
Thank you so much for this! Your experience as described in the article matches mine so closely, particularly this: “I, on the other hand, have always been recognized as being intelligent. Instead, I struggle to have my difficulties be recognized. What I need is someone to support me– to cook, to clean, to organize– to help me recover when tasks have gotten larger and more complicated than I can process.”
I called out that quote when I sent the article to my mom 😉
This is one of the clearest explanations I have seen of how the spectrum works. As a mother of a person on the spectrum I am really grateful for your work and hope this reaches a lot of people.
This is SUCH a great piece. Thank you for writing it. I’m the mother of someone I’m fairly sure is on the spectrum (we’re in the diagnosis process now) and a psychologist, and this piece gave me a whole new angle on understanding autism.
Amazing article and a real eye opener. This has really challenged the way I think about autism.
Darn…..this article needs to be read, and reread !!! but with COLORS ! I only have black ink !! Is it possible that you could produce this article and MAIL it to me? But I will print out what I can and keep to share widely !
Thank you so, so much
I have read this article 3 times in the last 15 hours and have sent it to four people so far. One of the most powerful takeaways is how “normies” view people with autism as relative to how it makes them feel: “My autism affects those around me mildly but my autism does affect me severely.”
This is an amazing article. Helped me so much! Thanks!
Love this article – thank you for helping me understand that my son (age 9) really is on the spectrum, even though he doesn’t fit with what I thought autism looked like. For 3 years, I doubted the diagnosis (despite the diagnosing doctor being an expert in the field). It all makes sense to me now.
I think the value of C.L’s piece lies in what it has stimulated and provoked. Two narrow threads of that are represented by: those who have praised it unconditionally on the one hand; and DamienSkyetheshadeofwriting who has offered critique of its thesis and narrative. These two in-tension threads are consistent with my sense of, experience of, thinking about, and talking about the autistic.
I see the autistic as emerging in and having force across the interaction between people. I see what people en masse do as being the collective. Across the process of that collective the social and societal is the dominant human reality. The autistic then occurring in relation to what is social and societal.
Basically, the autistic is had (has its origins, its epigenesis) when the sensing and perception and cognition and terms-of-occurring of an individual is not supported by the collective. There is then a spectrum across the degree of this.
I’m dyslexic. That can be conventionally seen as a “specific learning difficulty” (SLI); indicating that across what a contextual social requires as to learning, I might be seen as having a performance (functional) idiosyncrasy (a kind view) or deficit (the cruel demeaning view). Measures might be taken to remediate my learning process to make it more like social and societal supporting learning process. I see my being dyslexic differently: as a whole-person different-mode-of-being matter; everything about my processing taking me outside the box of any contextual social.
I then see a relation between the exigencies of being dyslexic, and being treated by a contextual social and society as tends to happen; and the autistic. It goes like this. If I don’t make too much existential fuss about my intrinsic sensing, perception, cognition, et al; I fall into the category of the on-the-spectrum grouping who are best treated by any contextual social and society. Across the functional criteria embedded in that social and society’s processing, I’m so little a problem that it might even be argued that the autistic does not figure in my occurrence. If I instead insist on acting out my dyslexic sensing. perception, cognition and talking (as I do, and have done always), the situation changes fundamentally and comprehensively. The conditions of my occurrence and developing (so crucial when I was younger) move to where I pose a much greater challenge to any contextual social and society, and in their view of and reaction to me, the epigenetical conditions for the autistic become much greater. I’m then still on the benign part of the spectrum, because I can exercise a degree of control (even as a child) over the nexus of all this (I can withdraw, hide, to lessen the intensities).
So in a sense the autistic does not begin as existing. Rather the autistic takes origins in how we humans play out our occurrence. Basically, the emergence of the social and societal also provides the conditions for the emergence of the autistic.
If we take all the life-challenges which C.L. cites in her modelling of the spectrum. My sense is that none of them are intrinsically associated with the autistic (or autism). Rather the autistic and autism (two very different occurrence outcomes) arise exigently across the interaction between being in which that life-challenge is embedded, and the collective’s engaging with that being across the ground of their socials and society. Applying C.L.’s metaphor, visible light attaches to what human’s have evolved to be. The various colours of that visible spectrum referring to components of functionality associated with that evolved collective being. Functional modelling thereby having a validity and legitimacy that cannot be reductively dismissed; even as its prevailing hegemony has to be challenged.
That necessity of challenging has the autistic as its engine and as its cutting edge. Prevailing in that challenging paves the pathway of progression for those who are autistic. That being said this progressing involves human experiencing as horrendous as in any civil war. The existentiality of being human is fought over; both sides to tension experiencing any victory of the other as the death of themselves.
DamienSkyetheshadeofwriting’s participation in the activity of this community then speaks to what is involved in working through this moment of things. Both she and the community are working legitimately across the truth of the autistic. The community has its evolved social (something very complex), and DamienSkyetheshadeofwriting’s frame of reference offends the frame of reference of that social. Where, from my point of view, the autistic is manifest in that nexus; the grounding conditions for the epigenesis of the autistic is actively present.
Now everything I have to say stems from my hermetic limitations (what limits what I can sense and perceive and think and speak to), which come from my biography and the development it allowed. My neurodiversity has a governing and limiting force. That determines what I can say about the autistic. That holding for all others who wish to speak about the autistic. The word then becoming a place-holder for myriad individuals offering talk about what the autistic is for them.
As someone with Asperger’s, I wish to sincerely thank you for the insightfulness, sensitivity and helpfulness of this article. I hope it will help to debunk many myths and misconceptions about us. I shared the article with my work colleagues and friends!
Just to clarify…99th percentile means you are in the top 1% of all the participants. … To score 99 percentile means that there are about 99 percent of people( who appeared for the test )who have scored less than you,that means you are in the top one percent of students who have scored great .
So your executive functioning is in the superior range…and that is awesome!
Great article
Mt – she clarified that in the testing SHE had it was looking at DYSFUNCTION not FUNCTION. And so a high score is BAD not good.
Just THANK YOU and BLESS YOU, CL! I now have a truly useful tool to share with my 29 year-old son with Asperger, as well as those who work with and love him.