Developmental and Behavioural Profiles of Children with Autism and Asperger Syndrome

INTRODUCTION I first heard the term ‘Asperger syndrome’ 20 years ago when I accompanied my sister-in-law Elizabeth and her son Ivan on a visit to a child psychiatrist. Ivan was 19 years old and had an odd pattern of behaviours since childhood. As none of the experts he had seen had been able to clearly diagnose his problem, we hoped that this new consultation would give a better insight into his difficulties. That day, Ivan received a diagnosis of Asperger syndrome, a condition that was virtually unknown at the time. The psychiatrist was Lorna Wing and the date was 1984, only a few years after she had written her paper on Asperger syndrome (Wing 1981). It is a long time since that day when I first met Lorna Wing and she diagnosed Ivan, but the impact of that day still remains. Although Ivan was too old by then to benefit from specialized education, he was still able to gain access to adult services and residential accommodation that was more tailored to his needs. All this, and the fact that his diagnosis brought increased understanding of his condition by the people who work with him, has helped him and his family enormously. There is no doubt that Ivan’s life was changed immeasureably by being able to gain an understandable diagnosis. Since Lorna Wing’s landmark paper on Asperger syndrome, there has been an extraordinary increase in the clinical, research and media attention given to this condition. The term Asperger syndrome has come far from the unknown status it had when she first wrote her landmark paper. It is now virtually a household term. In a recent article, Wing (2004) describes how public and professional conceptions about Asperger syndrome have changed since her original writings. There is now greater recognition of