Asperger syndrome
neurodevelopmental disorder; type of autism
Asperger syndrome (AS), also known as Asperger's syndrome or Asperger's, is a formerly used diagnostic category for a condition characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction and nonverbal communication, along with restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests. It ceased to be a distinct diagnosis when it was merged into autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the DSM-5 (2013) and ICD-11 (2022). Previously, it had been classified as a pervasive developmental disorder.
AS was considered milder than other diagnoses. This change reflected a shift toward a unified understanding of autism-related conditions rather than a judgment about individuals previously diagnosed with AS. Despite its removal from contemporary medical classification systems, many people continued to identify with the term Asperger's because of its long-standing use, personal relevance, and the way it shaped their diagnostic history and community identity. However, self-identification using the Asperger label became much rarer (going from 51 percent in 2018 to 19 percent in 2022, according to one set of polls) following the publication of the 2018 Edith Sheffer book Asperger's Children. The book revealed that the label's namesake was complicit in the Nazis' murder of disabled children.
The syndrome was named in 1976 by English psychiatrist Lorna Wing after the Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger, who in 1944 described children in his care who struggled to form friendships, did not understand others' gestures or feelings, engaged in one-sided conversations about their favorite interests, and were clumsy. In 1990 (coming into effect in 1993), the diagnosis of Asperger syndrome was included in the tenth edition (ICD-10) of the World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases, and in 1994 it was also included in the fourth edition (DSM-4) of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. With the publication of DSM-5 in 2013, the syndrome was removed, and the symptoms regarded as an autism spectrum disorder along with classic autism and pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS).
“Asperger syndrome” enters the record as neurodevelopmental disorder; type of autism. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Asperger, syndrome and neurodevelopmental can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Asperger syndrome” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Asperger, syndrome and neurodevelopmental provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q161790. The Library of Congress control number is sh91001353. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2013, 2022, 2018 and 1976.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Asperger syndrome” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.