Published on 12, July, 2020
I prefer to use autism or ASD because I believe high and low-functioning autism creates a false perception of The Autism Spectrum. To me and I imagine many others, low-functioning and high-functioning create the image of a horizontal line with one side saying "most autistic" and the other side saying "least autistic", especially since I hear people say "end of the spectrum."
I see The Autism Spectrum as more of a circle divided with each section representing a difficulty, with the individual in the centre having a variation of difficulties with differing levels of severity to one another. Like someone described as low-functioning may be able to walk through shops with no oversensitivity while someone described as high-functioning can have a higher level of severity in sensory processing that it's too hard and not be able to.
Do you think we should avoid the use of high and low-functioning as they're not clinical terms anyway?
Well there is a low and high functioning aspect to autism/Aspergers why would we avoid that term if it helps people understand characteristics about certain people ?
The problem is that functionality differs over time and by context. I am verbal, but have no useful relationship with time. I was late learning to tell the time, and if someone were to ask me the time on the street I would pretend not to have a watch. because my ability to tell the time is purely visual and I cannot easily translate the visual input from a watch-face into words. However, a non-verbal person might be wonderfully adept with time. The same goes for mental arithmetic, my general ability at maths is fairly good, but I have near zero abilities at mental arithmetic - I can never work out how much change is right, at least not without a long thought process. Again someone who is non-verbal might have amazing abilities in mental arithmetic.
I can see the issue that it can change maybe a system that would take into account the changes year to year would be a better model for services to get a better insight on you ? In my experiences services never read the paper work already so more will just be a waste of time.