High Function Autism or HFA, as well as Asperger’s Syndrome, are the two forms of autism considered mild, and there is no official method to diagnose High Function Autism or HFA so far.
A child with HFA will probably develop many autism symptoms and maybe even all the symptoms of autism, but they are to be displayed in a mild form, Thus the child with HFA can function perfectly well under most circumstances except for just a few.
Many autism Symptoms can be seen in a victim of HFA. In particular people, le who have HFA do not understand the perspective of a speaker most of the time, i.e.; they fail to get the humor or irony or mockery in the speaker’s tone and thus have difficulty in understanding others’ language at times.
Some of these people, especially the adults, may have a great vocabulary of words but speak in a very monotonous way or in a high-pitched voice, which will appear very awkward.
Those that have autism symptoms find it very difficult to keep eye contact with another person and, at the same time, have trouble getting body postures and various communicative gestures.
Such a person might be extremely sensitive to smells, sounds, textures, colors, lighting, and various other forms of sensory stimuli, which appear to be not a bother for most people, and this causes autism thrush, victims pain, and distress.
Whereas some of those with HFA will be unable to feel heat or cold, or any pain which can be hazardous as this might lead to self-injury.
Children and adults with High Function Autism symptoms will tend to follow strict routines, and a change in that will often cause violent outbursts or at least a lot of anxiety. But even doing a routine job can make them highly panicky, which is very hard to understand the other people around them.
Some adults with HFA will show interest just in one subject and thus have a very narrow interest zone. They would like to talk just about this topic and will be repetitive.
There are many similarities to be found between those that have Autism symptoms and those who have Asperger’s Syndrome. Both groups respond to therapy better than the other groups of autistic people, and they sometimes tend to have a higher or average intelligence level which is not seen in the other groups, as autism causes mental retardation in most cases.
A person is diagnosed with Pervasive Developmental Disorder – Not Otherwise Specified or PDD-NOS when the person or child displays some of the symptoms of autism but not all the autistic symptoms and when the symptoms cannot be enlisted in any other category of disorders.
Often PDD-NOS is thought of as being the same as HFA, but the symptoms of this can not correlate with autistic symptoms. Even though HFA is a form of autism, PDD-NOS cannot be called so.