Could Pat Howlin’s study make the linguistic distinction invalid?
DT: The distinction is the one that the parents and carers make – a functional distinction. As we know, it can be very dispiriting for people with Asperger’s syndrome to be given a residential placing where everyone else has a lower-functioning level of autism. Similarly, putting somebody with a lower- functioning level of autism into an environment where you expect the same from them as someone with Asperger’s syndrome is counterproductive. So, whatever the difficulties in classification, there clearly is a functional difference. AF: What is your view on the suggestion that there could be a neurological difference between the two conditions: namely, a left- and right-hemisphere difference? DT: There was a time when neurologists said that Asperger’s was a right-hemisphere disorder. I think it was Antonio Damasio who pointed out that people with right-hemisphere strokes had a condition called aprosodia, which is very like Asperger’s syndrome. The neuro-imaging does not really support th
