higher functioning

Adjective

high-functioning (comparative more high-functioning or higher-functioning, superlative most high-functioning or highest-functioning)

1. Functioning or operating at a high level.
   • The high-functioning therapists were found to have a greater tendency to confront patients and, when they did so, confronted them with their resources.1978, Allen E. Bergen with Sol Louis Garfield, Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavior Change: An Empirical Analysis, New York: Wiley, →ISBN, page 944
2. Of a person with a developmental or intellectual disability or mental illness, able to function in society; not greatly affected by a disability or illness.
   • A unit wide behavioral programming system for high functioning mentally retarded clients who displayed maladaptive behavioral excesses...1986 January, R.M. Fox, D.R. Bechtel, C. Bird, J. Livesay, R. Bittle, “A comprehensive institutional treatment program for aggressive-disruptive high functioning mentally retarded persons”, in...
3. Of a person with autism, exhibiting relatively high cognitive function.
   • Analysis of Wechsler IQ test scores for high-functioning autistic children and adults with Verbal and Full Scale IQ≥70 only partially supports previous contentions about the presence of a distinct profile of scores in autism.1996 August, Don J. Siegel, Nancy J. Minshew, “Wechsler IQ profiles in diagnosis of high-functioning autism”, in Journal of Autism & Developmental Disorders, volume 26, number 4, →ISSN, page 400