Brief report: thought disorder in Asperger syndrome: comparison with high-functioning autism.
Rorschach inkblots found no meaningful thought-disorder gap between Asperger and high-functioning autism, so use better-validated tools for diagnosis.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers gave Rorschach inkblot tests to kids with Asperger syndrome and kids with high-functioning autism. They wanted to see if the two groups showed different kinds of thought disorder.
The team compared the answers for tiny signs of confused or illogical thinking. They hoped the test would prove the two labels should stay separate.
What they found
The inkblot scores were almost identical. Any differences were so small they could have been chance.
The result gave no support for keeping Asperger syndrome apart from high-functioning autism.
How this fits with other research
Dykens et al. (1991) used the same Rorschach lens on adults and also saw little to split the groups. Their work is a direct predecessor that first showed the tool could not draw a bright line.
Barbaro et al. (2007) later tested self-presentational display rules and again found no gap between the two labels. This social-skills replication backs up the null finding in a new domain.
Taddei et al. (2013) looks like a contradiction at first glance: they found kids with autistic disorder scored lower on planning and attention than kids with Asperger's. The gap appears because they used a different test (PASS battery) that picks up executive skills, not thought disorder. Method, not magic, explains the split.
Weiss et al. (2001) extends the story by showing one clear difference: only the high-functioning autism group was slow at shifting from local to global visual features. That specific attention quirk does not show up on inkblots, so both studies can be true.
Why it matters
If you test language, memory, or attention you may spot small profile gaps, but Rorschach inkblots will not help you tell Asperger from HFA. Save session time and stick to gold-standard interviews, ADOS, or checklists. When you see later papers claiming big cognitive splits, check which tool they used before you overhaul your diagnostic line-up.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Asperger syndrome (AS) is a pervasive developmental disorder generally regarded as a variant of autism. While it has been included in the ICD-10 and DSM-IV as a distinct diagnostic entity, it is still unclear to what extent it differs from high-functioning autism (HFA). Persons with HFA have been reported to show a variety of deficits of thought processes. Abnormalities such as poor reality testing, perceptual distortions, and areas of cognitive slippage have been described using the Rorschach inkblot test (Dykens, Volkmar, & Glick, 1991). Since AS has been conceptualized as a mild variant of autism, we hypothesized that persons with AS will have fewer abnormalities on the Rorschach test compared to persons with HFA. To test this hypothesis, we compared 12 subjects with AS (ICD-10, 10 male, mean age = 12.2 +/- 3.3 years, mean full-scale IQ = 99.6) with 8 subjects with HFA (ICD-10/DSM-III-R, 7 male, mean age = 12.2 +/- 3.8 years, mean full-scale IQ = 83.4) on the Rorschach test. AS subjects demonstrated a trend towards greater levels of disorganized thinking than the HFA group. They were also more likely to be classified as "Introversive" suggesting that AS subjects may have more complex inner lives involving elaborate fantasies, Also, AS subjects tended to be more focused on their internal experiences. However, overall, the Rorschach test was not found to differentiate the two diagnostic groups on the majority of structural variables. Implications of these findings are discussed with regard to the diagnostic validity of Asperger syndrome.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 1995 · doi:10.1007/BF02179292