Effective Practices for Students with Asperger Syndrome.

During the past several years, recognition and use of the clinical term Asperger Syndrome have increased dramatically. Thus, although this condition was introduced in 1944, Asperger Syndrome (AS) was virtually unknown worldwide until only recently. Today AS is a relatively common developmental disability whose impact on children, families, educators and other professionals is profound (Barnhill, 2001b). Hans Asperger, a Viennese physician first brought this condition to the attention of the psychiatric community. Based on his work with a group of children with a set of significant and chronic neurodevelopmental social behaviors, Asperger wrote a thesis wherein he described a group of children who today are known diagnostically by his name (Asperger, 1944). Asperger's seminal work accentuated the social peculiarities and social isolation of the children he studied. Although he observed that these individuals had many characteristics in common with children with autism, AS children generally had average cognitive and language development. Based on these characteristics, Asperger opined that his sample represented an independent and distinct clinical condition. In 1981, Wing resurrected the banner that brought AS to the attention of clinical professionals in a paper in which she discussed the syndrome based on her work with 35 individuals ranging in age from 5 to 35 years. Recognition and wide-scale acceptance of the term AS was further advanced in 1994 when the American Psychiatric Association added the syndrome to its list of pervasive developmental disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th edition) (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Today, the condition is widely known and discussed throughout the world, by professionals, parents, and others, but there is intense debate related to whether AS is an independent diagnostic category or is an element of the autism spectrum or continuum (Klin, Volkmar, & Sparrow, 2000). The pervasive and potent attention to AS is attributable at least in part to its increased prevalence (Ehlers & Gillberg, 1993). Indeed, ever-growing numbers of individuals are thought to have AS. Kadesjo, Gillberg, and Nagberg (1999), for instance, estimated that as many as 48 per 10,000 children could have the syndrome. These estimates, however, are widely debated and disputed, as represented by Volkmar and Klin's (2000) contention that "the present data are, at best, 'guestimates' of its prevalence"