The list of signs and symptoms mentioned in various sources for Asperger syndrome includes the 27 symptoms listed below:
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Medical Books Excerpts Excerpts of published medical book chapters related to Asperger syndrome are available from published medical books for more detailed information about Asperger syndrome.
Copyright notice for book excerpts: Copyright © 2008 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. All rights reserved.
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A primary characteristic of infantile autistic disorder is unresponsiveness to people. Infants with this disorder won’t cuddle, avoid eye contact and facial expressions, and are indifferent to affection and physical contact. Parents may report that the child becomes rigid or flaccid when held, cries when touched, and shows little or no interest in human contact.
As the infant grows older, his smiling response is delayed or absent. He doesn’t lift his arms in anticipation of being picked up or form an attachment to a specific caregiver. Furthermore, he doesn’t show the anxiety about strangers that’s typical in the 8-month-old infant.
A child who’s autistic fails to learn the usual socialization games (peek-a-boo, pat-a-cake, or bye-bye). He’s likely to relate to others only to fill a physical need and then without eye contact or speech. The end result may be mutual withdrawal between parents and child.
Severe language impairment and lack of imaginative play are characteristic. The child may be mute or may use immature speech patterns. For example, he may use a single word to express a series of activities; he may say “ground” when referring to any step in using a playground slide.
His speech commonly shows echolalia (meaningless repetition of words or phrases addressed to him) and pronoun reversal (“you go walk” when he means, “I want to go for a walk”). When answering a question, he may simply repeat the question to mean yes and remain silent to mean no.
He shows little imagination, seldom acting out adult roles or engaging in fantasy play. In fact, he may insist on lining up an exact number of toys in the same manner over and over or repetitively mimic the actions of someone else.
A child who’s autistic shows characteristically bizarre behavior patterns, such as screaming fits, rituals, rhythmic rocking, arm flapping, crying without tears, and disturbed sleeping and eating patterns. His behavior may be self-destructive (hand biting, eye gouging, hair pulling, or head banging) or self-stimulating (playing with his own saliva, feces, and urine). His bizarre responses to his environment include an extreme compulsion for sameness.
In response to sensory stimuli, he may underreact or overreact and he may ignore objects — dropping those he’s given or not looking at them — or he may become excessively absorbed in them — continually watching the objects or the movement of his own fingers over the objects. He commonly responds to stimuli by head banging, rocking, whirling, and hand flapping. He tends to avoid using sight and hearing to interact with the environment.
A child who’s autistic may exhibit additional behavioral abnormalities, such as:
❑ cognitive impairment (most have an IQ of 35 to 49)
❑ eating, drinking, and sleeping problems, for example, limiting his diet to just a few foods, excessive drinking, or repeatedly waking during the night and rocking
❑ mood disorders, including labile mood, giggling or crying without reason, lack of emotional responses, no fear of real danger but excessive fear of harmless objects, and generalized anxiety.
Source: Professional Guide to Diseases (Eighth Edition), 2005
Typical features of infantile autistic disorder include unresponsiveness to people, language impairment, lack of imaginative play, bizarre behavior patterns, and abnormal reactions to sensory stimuli.
Infants with this disorder avoid eye contact, have little or no facial expression, and are indifferent to affection and physical contact. Parents may report that the child becomes rigid or flaccid when held, cries when touched, and shows little or no interest in human contact.
As the infant grows older, his smiling response is delayed or absent. He doesn’t lift his arms in anticipation of being picked up or form an attachment to a specific caregiver. Nor does he show the anxiety about strangers that’s typical in the 8-month-old infant.
The autistic child fails to learn the usual socialization games (peek-a-boo, pat-a-cake, or bye-bye). He’s likely to relate to others only to fill a physical need and then without eye contact or speech. The end result may be mutual withdrawal between parents and child.
The child may be mute or may use immature speech patterns. For example, he may use a single word to express a series of activities; he may say “ground” when referring to any step in using a playground slide.
His speech commonly shows echolalia (meaningless repetition of words or phrases addressed to him) and pronoun reversal (“you go walk” when he means “I want to go for a walk”). When answering a question, he may simply repeat the question to mean yes and remain silent to mean no.
The child shows little imagination, seldom acting out adult roles or engaging in fantasy play. In fact, he may insist on lining up an exact number of toys in the same manner over and over or repetitively mimic the actions of someone else.
The autistic child shows characteristically bizarre behavior patterns, such as screaming fits, rituals, rhythmic rocking, arm flapping, crying without tears, and disturbed sleeping and eating patterns. His behavior may be self-destructive (hand biting, eye gouging, hair pulling, or head banging) or self-stimulating (playing with his own saliva, stool, and urine).
His bizarre responses to his environment include an extreme compulsion for sameness.
The autistic child may underreact or overreact to sensory stimuli; he may ignore objects — dropping those he’s given or not looking at them — or he may become excessively absorbed in them — continually watching the objects or the movement of his own fingers over the objects. He commonly responds to stimuli by head banging, rocking, whirling, and hand flapping. He tends to avoid using sight and hearing to interact with the environment.
Other characteristics of an autistic child include:
Source: Handbook of Diseases, 2003
Asperger syndrome (AS) is a pervasive developmental disorder characterized by an inability to understand how to interact socially. Other features include clumsy and uncoordinated motor movements, social impairment with extreme obtuseness, limited interests and/or unusual preoccupations, repetitive routines or rituals, speech and language peculiarities, and non-verbal communication problems. Generally, children with AS have few facial expressions apart from anger or misery. Most have excellent rote memory and musical ability, and become intensely interested in one or two subjects (sometimes to the exclusion of other topics). They may talk at length about a favorite subject or repeat a word or phrase many times. Children with AS tend to be "in their own world" and preoccupied with their own agenda. (Source: excerpt from NINDS Asperger Syndrome Information Page: NINDS)
For a more detailed analysis of Asperger syndrome as a symptom, including causes, drug side effect causes, and drug interaction causes, please see our Symptom Center information for Asperger syndrome.
These general reference articles may be of interest in relation to medical signs and symptoms of disease in general:
Full list of premium articles on symptoms and diagnosis
The symptom information on this page attempts to provide a list of some possible signs and symptoms of Asperger syndrome. This signs and symptoms information for Asperger syndrome has been gathered from various sources, may not be fully accurate, and may not be the full list of Asperger syndrome signs or Asperger syndrome symptoms. Furthermore, signs and symptoms of Asperger syndrome may vary on an individual basis for each patient. Only your doctor can provide adequate diagnosis of any signs or symptoms and whether they are indeed Asperger syndrome symptoms.
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