Asperger's Syndrome

Asperger's Syndrome Symptoms & Signs

• Abnormal nonverbal communication, such as problems with eye contact, facial expressions, body postures, or gestures.
• Failure to develop peer relationships.
• Scapegoating by other children as "weird" or "strange".
• Lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment, interests or achievements with other people (e.g., by a lack of showing, bringing, or pointing out objects of interest to other people).
• Markedly impaired expression of pleasure in other people's happiness.
• Inability to return social or emotional feelings.
• Inflexible about changes in specific routines or rituals.
• Repetitive finger flapping, twisting, or whole body movements.
• Preoccupation with restricted areas of interest (unusually narrow or unusually intense). Some examples are obsession with train schedules, phone books, stamp collecting, or other collections of objects.
• Preoccupation with parts of whole objects.
• Repetitive behaviors, including repetitive self-injurious behavior.
• There is no general delay in language.
• There is no delay in cognitive development, or in the development of age-appropriate self-help skills or in curiosity about the environment.