What is the difference between PDD-NOS and Asperger’s?

Answer

G’day Rassi,

That’s a good question, because these terms do indeed have a lot in common.

In the “DSM”, a manual that psychiatrists often use when someone comes to them with certain problems, the characteristics associated with the various disorders are explained as precisely as possible. In this way, a psychiatrist can use the specific characteristics of the person to investigate whether there may be a disorder, and if so, which one. In the year 2000 DSM you will find PDD-NOS and Asperger’s both under the category ‘developmental disorders’. That’s because they both occur during childhood: the development of children with PDD-NOS or Asperger’s syndrome differs from that of children without PDD-NOS or Asperger’s syndrome.

Someone with Asperger’s syndrome first of all has difficulty with social interaction, such as making eye contact, playing together or sharing feelings. Secondly, someone with Asperger’s also has certain very recognizable interests or certain behaviors that he or she repeats. For example, people with Asperger’s may have a very strong interest in football, or trains, or musical instruments; but it is also possible that they always want to do everything in a fixed order, or that they always make the same movement, for example twisting their fingers or flapping their arms.

PDD-NOS is an abbreviation from English, and stands for ‘pervasive developmental disorder – not otherwise specified’. Translated into Dutch, that means that it is a developmental disorder that is not aHas ll features of any of the other developmental disorders. So someone with PDD-NOS can have problems with social interaction, but not have very recognizable interests or behavior, or vice versa – while someone with Asperger always has both characteristics.

Hopefully the difference has become a bit clearer, but scientists now also agree that it is quite difficult to make a concrete distinction between PDD-NOS and Asperger’s, and a number of other developmental disorders. In the new version of the DSM, from the year 2013, these have all been merged under a common name: autism spectrum disorder.

Annabel Nijhof (a doctoral student researching autism spectrum disorder)