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Bill Gates is the Co-founder of the Microsoft Corporation and is diagnosed with ASD.

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Jerry Seinfeld is a popular American comedian and is diagnosed with ASD.

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In 1943 child psychiatrist, Leo Conner, wrote a paper on 11 children he speculated had autism. He described the children as being lost in their own world, and classified autism as infant psychosis -- blaming the parents for causing the disorder. Conner developed an incredibly small criteria for diagnosing autism. This narrow criteria led him to believe autism was incredibly rare. It wasn’t until the 1970’s that cognitive psychologist, Lorna Wing, decided to undertake a study on the prevalence of autism in the general population. Wing discovered Conner’s criteria was too narrow and she was not the first to oppose his ideas. In 1944, a year after Conners paper was published, German author Hans Asperger wrote a competing paper against Conner. He framed autism as a lifelong polygenic disability that requires compassionate support. Rather than blame the parents like Conner, Asperger viewed autism as a diverse continuum, from gifts to struggles. Asperger believed autism was common and always had been.

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1. Impaired Theory of Mind: The Theory of Mind describes one’s ability to identify the thoughts, beliefs, desires and intentions of” someone else. A child with ASD typically does possess this ability and may “not recognize or understand the cues that indicate the thought or feelings of another person.”
2. Weak Central Coherence: A child with autism can be incredibly detail oriented, but may struggle to grasp “the overall picture” of something.
3. Impaired Executive Function: According to the textbook, executive function includes: organizational and planning abilities, working memory, inhibition or impulse control, time management and prioritizing, and using new strategies -- “children with ASD have been recognized as having problems with executive function”

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The term Asperger's has been around for a little over two decades. Although the term is still used legitimately since it is recognized by a majority of the general public -- it has the new diagnostic term of ASD Level 1 without language or intellectual impairment.

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The Diagnostic Criteria of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD)

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The Diagnostic Criteria of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD)

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Current Criteria (DSM-5):
1. Persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across multiple contexts.
2. Restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities.
3. The symptoms are present in the early development period
4. Cause clinically significant impairment in social, occupational or other important areas of current functioning.
5. These disturbances are not better explained by intellectual disability or global developmental level.

The DSM-5 criteria uses specifiers to “describe information relevant to the diagnoses” such as the severity level of the behavior. The severity of a behavior is rated from a Level 1 to a Level 3, 3 being the most severe.

Level 1: Requiring support

Level 2: Requiring substantial support

Level 3: Requiring very substantial support

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The DSM-IV Criteria vs. The DSM-V Criteria

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The DSM-IV Criteria vs. The DSM-V Criteria

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The DSM-V criteria replaced the DSM-IV's term “pervasive developmental disorder” with “autism spectrum disorder”. Another change, was that the DSM-V criteria started using ASD as an umbrella term with specific information about the level of expression to paint a more accurate picture than the diagnostic categories used in the DSM-IV, such as: Rett’s disorder, childhood disintegrative disorder, pervasive developmental disorder and Asperger’s. The DSM-V criteria also began including sensory sensitivity such as hyper- and hypo-reactivity. Since the DSM-V criteria is stricter than the DSM-IV, more children have been diagnosed with ASD in recent years