high-functioning autism

The frontal lobe is associated with executive function, planning, inhibition, social behavior.

If the HFA and AS group performed poorly, a skeptic might argue, "Well, maybe it's just frontal lobe damage causing the deficit, not a specific theory of mind problem." By including a Tourette syndrome group who also have frontal lobe abnormalities but do not have autism, Baron-Cohen could test this alternative explanation.

If the Tourette group performed normally, it would suggest the deficit in the HFA and AS group is specifically about social cognition and theory of mind, not just general frontal lobe dysfunction.

There were also two control tasks.

The first was a gender recognition task.

These control tasks were included to rule out the possibility that any poor performance on the Eyes Task was simply due to basic perceptual difficulties rather than a genuine theory of mind deficit.

Now for the results, and you need to memorize these numbers because examiners will expect you to cite them precisely.

The HFA and AS group scored a mean of 16.3 out of 25 on the Eyes Task.

Get ready with me while we talk about one of the most misunderstood elements of parenting children with autism.

When a child is labelled high functioning, people often assume that they are coping and don't need much support.

But so often the reason they seem to be coping is that they are masking and that there is a huge amount of support going on behind the scenes and therefore the label that is supposed to just describe them becomes the very reason that they are overlooked.

I want to talk about what other people do not see, the hidden costs on the child and the pressure that that puts on parents.

So high functioning autism is not a medical diagnosis.

It's more like an informal label given to adults or children people with autism that on the surface of it appear to be coping well.

They're not the children in school that very obviously present with high needs.

They are not the kids that are disruptive in class.