ICD-10, WHO 1993 Diagnostic Criteria for Asperger Syndrome

1. There is no clinically significant general delay in spoken or receptive language or cognitive development.

Diagnosis requires that single word should have developed by 2 years of age or earlier and that communicative phrases be used by 3 years or earlier. Self-help skills, adaptive behavior and curiosity about the environment during the first three years should be at a level consistent with normal intellectual development. However, motor milestones may be somewhat delayed and motor clumsiness is usual (although not a necessary diagnostic feature). Isolated special skills, often related to abnormal preoccupations are common, but are required for diagnosis.

2. There are qualitative abnormalities in reciprocal social interaction in at least two of the following area’s:

a. Failure adequately to use eye-to-eye gaze, facial expressions, body posture and gesture to regulate social interaction.

b. Failure to develop (in a manner appropriate to mental age, and despite ample opportunities) peer relationships that involve a mutual sharing of interests, activities and emotions.

c. Lack of social-emotional reciprocity as shown by an impaired or deviant response to other people’s emotions, or lack of modulation of behavior according to social context; or a weak integration of social; emotional, and communicative behaviors.

d. Lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment, interests, or achievements with other people( e.g. lack of showing, bringing or pointing out to other people objects of interest to the individual)


3. The individual exhibits an unusually intense, circumscribed interest or restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped patterns of behavior, interests, And activities in at least two of the following:

a. An encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interests that are abnormal in their intensity and circumscribed nature though not in their content or focus.

b. Apparent compulsive adherence to specific, non-functional routines or rituals

c. Stereotyped and repetitive motor mannerisms that involve either hand-or finger-flapping or –twisting, or complex whole-body movements

d. Preoccupations with part-objects or non-functional elements of play materials( such as their odor, the feel of their surface, or the noise or vibration that they generate.


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