FIGURE 1: ICD-10 criteria for autism
A. Abnormal or impaired development is evident before the age of 3 years in at least one of the following areas:
1. Receptive or expressive language as used in social communication
2. The development of selective social attachments or of reciprocal social interaction
3. Functional or symbolic play.
B. A total of at least six symptoms from (1), (2), and (3) must be present, with at least two from (1) and at least one from each of (2) and (3):
1. Qualitative abnormalities in reciprocal social interaction are manifest in at least two of the following areas:
a. Failure adequately to use eye-to-eye gaze, facial expression, body posture, and gesture to regulate social interaction
b. Failure to develop (in a manner appropriate to mental age, and despite ample opportunities) peer relationships that involve a mutual sharing of interests, activities, and emotions
c. Lack of socio-economic reciprocity as shown by an impaired or deviant response to other people's emotions; or lack of modulation of behaviour according to social context; or a weak integration of social, emotional, and communicative behaviours
d. Lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment, interests, or achievements with other people (e.g. lack of showing, bringing, or pointing out to other people objects of interest to the individual).
2. Qualitative abnormalities in communication are manifest in at least one of the following areas:
a. Delay in, or total lack of, development of spoken language that is not accompanied by an attempt to compensate through the use of gesture or mime as an alternative mode of communication (often preceded by a lack of communicative babbling)
b. Relative failure to initiate or sustain conversational interchange (at whatever level of language skills is present), in which there is reciprocal responsiveness to the communications of the other person
c. Stereotyped and repetitive use of language or idiosyncratic use of words or phrases
d. Lack of varied spontaneous make-believe or (when young) social imitative play.
3. Restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped patterns of behaviour, interests, and activities are manifest in at least one of the following areas:
a. An encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped, restricted patterns of interest that are abnormal in content or focus; or one or more interests that are abnormal in their intensity and circumscribed nature though not in their content or focus
b. Apparently compulsive adherence to specific, non-functional routines or rituals
c. Stereotyped and repetitive motor mannerisms that involve either hand or finger flapping or twisting, or complex whole body movements
d. Preoccupations with part-objects or non-functional elements of play materials (such as their odour, the feel of their surface, or the noise or vibration that they generate).
FIGURE 2: Criteria for Asperger syndrome
A. Qualitative abnormalities in reciprocal social interaction - criteria as for autism. However, lack of social reciprocity is more typically manifest by an eccentric and one-sided social approach to others, rather than social and emotional indifference
B. Restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped patterns of behaviour, interests, and activities - criteria as for autism
However, motor mannerisms, preoccupations with parts of objects, rituals and marked distress at change tend to be less common than in autism. Instead, encompassing preoccupations about a circumscribed topic or interest are characteristic.
C. The disturbance causes clinically significant impairment in social, occupational or other important areas of functioning
D. There is no clinically significant general delay in language (i.e. single words by 2 years; communicative phrases by 3 years
E. There is no significant delay in cognitive development, of age-appropriate self-help skills, adaptive behaviour, and curiosity about the environment
F. Criteria are not met for another specific pervasive developmental disorder or schizophrenia
http://www.intellectualdisability.info/mental_phys_health/autisticspec_ph.html Sp2 meets all of the criteria (if only to a mild degree in some instances) in the for autisum not just the six required for diagnosis. She doesn't meet D in the criteria for Asperger Syndrome although if you were meeting her for the first time now you would think that is where she fits.
We have come a long way.