Quoted: The diagnostic criteria for autism has changed dramatically, even in the last 20 years, explained Megan Farley, a psychologist at the Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Until the mid-1990s, there wasn?t an autism “spectrum” ? there was just autistic disorder. “It was this very strict type of diagnostic category,” Farley says. That captured the “classic” cases of autism, but people with more subtle signs of the disorder slipped by unnoticed until 1994, when Asperger?s syndrome was introduced. (Asperger?s syndrome is no longer an “official” diagnosis, and what used to be Asperger?s is now the mildest level of autism spectrum disorder.)
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