The 18 February is celebrated International Asperger Syndrome Day. Since 2007, the affected groups and associations in favor of people with Asperger's Syndrome (AS) seek to make the population aware of the characteristics of these children, youth and adults: knowing to understand.
On February 18, 1906, Hans Asperger was born, an Austrian psychiatrist who 70 years ago spoke for the first time about a series of characteristics common to a group of children where social difficulties were the great common denominator between them. In recent years, many have been interested in learning more about people with AS, but there is still much for their social understanding.
Today we know that AS is a neurodevelopmental disorder that is found within the Autism Spectrum Disorders (TORCH). The brain of people with AS functions differently than usual and this leads them to possess a series of common characteristics that broadly define Asperger's Syndrome (L. Wing, 1983):
- Lack of empathy.
- Naivety.
- Little ability to make friends.
- Pedantic or repetitive language.
- Poor non-verbal communication.
- Excessive interest in certain topics.
- Motor clumsiness and poor coordination.
People with AS have a intellectual capacity within the average, In most cases. The usual thing is to find a normal-medium or normal-low total IQ (intelligence quotient). It is common to observe better results in verbal than manipulative ability, since clinically significant language disorders do not appear in AS, unlike Autistic Disorder (where intelligence is usually affected at the same time).
These boys and girls have a difficulty of attending to the whole over the detail. This means that their brain can store a large amount of data related to a specific topic such as dinosaurs, geography, astronomy, sports information, etc. This peculiarity reveals a mental rigidity which leads them to have a limited spectrum of interests. Being able to store such an amount of data, in many cases a high capacity is suspected, however, the frequency of a high IQ is not greater than in the normative population for its age.
The internalization of the concept of time may be altered. This temporal distortion makes that after several hours have passed, they have the feeling that only a few minutes have passed. Poor personal and social organization is exacerbated by this characteristic. In the social sphere, for example, temporal aspects are crucial, so in a conversation the interlocutor must be able to make intervals between questions or conversations adjusted to the capacity of understanding and patience of the receiver. The person with AS, by not perceiving time in the same way as the interlocutor and not giving importance to temporal and prosodic aspects can eternalize the answer to questions and make the speech somewhat exasperate for the other.
In Asperger's Syndrome the language is preserved in formal aspects (formation of sentences, use of words, etc.), but he's altered in the pragmatic aspects. There is a misuse in the behavior of language. The pragmatic aspects affected in SA are:
- Turn to speak: There are difficulties in respecting reciprocity in dialogue. Sometimes, the boy or girl with AS assumes the role of protagonist of the conversation, dispenses with what the other says or pretends to say, becoming an exclusive talker. Mental rigidity and the limited spectrum of interests often turn the conversation to a single topic of interest unique to the person with AS, related to one of their favorite topics. Also influencing this type of speech is the misidentification of dialogue markers, which often function as implicit rules for conversations. The looks, the intonation, the pauses, etc. they mark the changes from "who speaks" to "who listens" and vice versa. By not being able to grasp the implicit aspects, a language that tends towards monologue frequently appears.
- Start of conversation: The difficulty of the person with AS to understand the implicit rules of the language leads him to change the topic of conversation arbitrarily, based on his judgment. These sudden changes in conversation topics can be uncomfortable for the recipient, as they feel a continuous lack of empathy in your conversation.
- Figurative language: The use of irony or metaphor is hardly grasped by children with AS. These tend to the literal interpretation of the language, which leads them to miss very relevant information from the conversation or even to not understand the message that the other sends them.
- Clarifications: The difficulty of putting themselves in the place of the other prevents them from realizing whether or not the interlocutor understands what they want to explain. For this reason, this monologistic discourse is frequently used.
Therefore, we can observe an adequate formal speech but with bad pragmatics and frequently bad prosody. Prosody could be understood as the intonation or rhythm that speakers give to sentences to emphasize their meaning and lead to expressing emotions through what is spoken. People with AS have a prosody not adapted to the context. This characteristic often makes them appear "wise" or "pedantic," which is reinforced by the repeated use of certain words.
At the reader level, there appears on many occasions a hyperlexia, which could be understood as that extraordinary capacity for formal reading but linked to very low levels of reading comprehension. Again we highlight how the forms of language and reading are completely preserved but it is the aspects related to the acquisition of absolute meaning that show alterations.
Attention deficit symptoms are common in children with AS. In the case of these children, we observe how the lack of attention is usually linked to situations of social interaction and not so much to academic aspects or daily life (difference with ADHD). It is common for this lack of attention to social aspects or situations to lead them to abandon interest in them, while in other situations related to their favorite topics they may even remain hyper-focused.
There have been many investigations that have focused on finding the reason for the appearance of these characteristics, however, we cannot accept a single theory that explains by itself the diversity of these people. Today we know that there are different alterations that allow us to understand the complexity of AS.
Alteration in Theory of Mind:
The Theory of Mind is a theoretical construct, according to which human beings are capable of perceiving the thoughts and sensations of our peers. When there is an alteration in this ability, our social skills are seriously damaged, since the ability to put ourselves in the place of the other is significantly reduced. This is what happens in children with AS, however, since there are adequate cognitive levels (intelligence is within the average values), in general they want to establish relationships with others. They are capable of knowing what the other person thinks, but it is very difficult for them to put that knowledge into practice, since they do not give it the importance it has in the field of relationships with others. This social difficulty is often experienced with feelings of discomfort and loneliness. There is not a rejection of others, but a difficulty in the relationship with them.
Alteration in Executive Functions:
The Executive Functions are in charge of controlling complex mental activities necessary to plan, organize, guide, regulate and evaluate the behavior that we must implement to achieve goals. These functions are linked to the frontal lobe. The alteration in this key region of the brain explains some of the common characteristics in people with AS: mental rigidity, difficulty in facing new situations, limited interests, obsessive character and attention disorders.
Disruption of sensory modulation:
This disorganization is produced by a neurological alteration in the stimulus processing system. This difficulty can be expressed as hyposensitivity or a low capacity to respond or adapt to stimuli that come from the senses or as hypersensitivity to sensory stimuli. Disruption in sensory modulation explains characteristics that we frequently observe in people with AS, such as: discomfort in the face of everyday noises or avoidance of places where sounds are mixed (supermarkets, entertainment venues ...), avoidance of being touched unexpectedly, radical avoidance of certain foods (due to their texture or flavor), etc.
The appearance of depressive or anxiety symptoms is something frequent in people with AS, being present in 37% of adolescents and adults (Ghaziuddin et al, 1998). The factors that lead these people to suffer from comorbid psychiatric symptoms such as anxiety or depression are not yet fully understood. The latest research seems to find a relationship between these symptoms and the processes of social comparison (Hedley et al, 2006). Since in Asperger's Syndrome The desire to interact with others is preserved, but it is linked to serious difficulties in social skillsWe find people who are aware of their social difficulty and when comparing the quality of their relationships with others, they observe the bad results obtained in this comparison in a negative and totally aversive way.
Knowing a little more about the characteristics of Asperger's Syndrome helps us understand these people. To understand them is to make us aware that social limitations appear that can make their speech different but not for that reason ceasing to be rich, full of meaning and even feeling. The ways of expressing emotion is different in each person, and of course in them too. Give visibility to diversity It is an objective that the XNUMXst century society should set itself as a priority.