Someone with autism who has a severe intellectual disability and is non-verbal has significantly different needs from a person who was formally labeled as having Asperger’s, so why are they considered the same disability?
In: Biology
Basically, all of the issues/symptoms that individuals on the spectrum have are related to the same groups of executive functions. Executive functions are things like self-control, short term memory, emotions, planning, etc. So you have a group of executive functions that are deficient in some way, and they all can have different levels of deficiency. Executive functions themselves are complicated things that can have huge variations in how much or how little they impact an individual. There are too many combinations of executive functions and severity to assign each a different name, especially given that the treatments are very similar for several different levels of an executive function.
So, it makes the most sense to group everything under one heading “Autism Spectrum Disorder” and tailor treatment to that particular individual’s needs. What you’re really doing is just creating a label for the individual that can be used to get them the assistance they need. The assistance is going to be individualized, but the need for that assistance is global across the group.
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