Doctor said this when I asked about autism/asperger’s. Never did understand what that could mean. Looked it up recently and… oh.
“High-functioning autism (HFA) was historically an autism classification where a person exhibits no intellectual disability, but may exhibit deficits in communication, emotion recognition and expression, and social interaction”.
A more generic and neutral way to make this distinction is low needs vs high needs (low need being roughly same as high functioning).
Many people get upset when claims are made about intelligence. This alternate naming sidestep the problem.
I like this!
If the person was diagnosed using the DSM-V and was assigned a diagnostic level, they can use that too.