Of course, there is a disclaimer that these tests are not diagnostic, and they're only to be used for "genuine research." Still, for parents of children on the autism spectrum, adults wondering whether they might fall into an autism spectrum category, or anyone concerned about the symptoms of autism, these tests may be a useful first step in deciding whether or not to seek an evaluation.This is very bad advice.
First of all, if you seriously think that you may have a disorder such as autism or any other mental disorder then you should seek professional help. You should not try to take a test you found on the Internet to see if you might "fall into an autism spectrum category" or to give you a "hint". None of the lists of signs symptoms on the Internet nor any of of the tests out there are going to be able to tell you whether you have autism. Your "hint" should be that you think there is something wrong and that alone should spur you to seek a professional's opinion.
But lets say that you have decided to take Lisa's advise or that you, like many people before you, have decided that this test is an appropriate way to determine whether you have autism. The question then becomes if you take the Autism Quotient test and score high enough, how likely are you to actually have autism?
It turns out that the answer is not very likely - the odds are about 1 in 10.
To say that the opposite way, if you had a group of ten people who all scored high (over 32), nine of them would not have autism. So if you are claiming that you have autism based solely on a self-administered AQ test then you are most likely wrong.
To make matters worse, even if you score below that 32 number, you are still somewhat likely to have autism. If you took a group of ten people who actually had autism, two of them would likely score below the 32 cutoff.
So either way the AQ isn't going to tell you that much.
To understand the reason the odds are so very much against you, you have to understand what the purpose of a test like the AQ is - and what it isn't. A test like this is supposed to be used to help find people who are more likely to have a condition. It is not supposed to be able to tell you that one specific person has the condition.
A test like this can be used as a screening tool in research to help researchers find the people who are more likely to have a condition so that they can focus on those people. Or, if the test has been validated in earlier studies, researchers can use the results of the test to draw general conclusions about the people in their study.
In either case, to properly use the test you have to know how good of a job the test does at finding those who have a condition and eliminating those that don't. These concepts are formally called sensitivity and specificity. The sensitivity of a test tells you have good of a job the test does at finding the people who have the condition while the specificity tells you how good of a job the the test does at telling you which people don't have the condition.
In an ideal world, you would want every test to identify every person that has a condition (sensitivity of 100%) and exclude every person who doesn't (specificity of 100%). But, in the real world, tests are never that accurate and we have to make do with what we can get.
When it comes the sensitivity and specificity, the AQ isn't the greatest but it isn't too bad. According to a recent paper that I was reading, the AQ has been demonstrated to find 80% of the target group (sensitivity 80%) while only misidentifying 2% of the rest (specificity ~ 98%).
Which leads me to my next, point, what is it exactly that the AQ is supposed to be finding? Here's a hint, it isn't what you normally think of as autism - "The Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) has been developed to measure the degree to which an adult with normal intelligence has autistic traits". If you dig a little bit more, you would see that this test is meant to find adults who have "traits" of Asperger's or high-functioning autism.
Or in other words, this test is geared towards finding individuals who fall on a small portion of the autism spectrum but is not going to be very helpful in identifying the majority of people with autism. Well, it won't be helpful unless you believe that - all evidence to the contrary - the majority of people with autism are high functioning.
So far the AQ doesn't seem to bad - it should be capable of identifying the majority of its target audience. But there is one last piece to the puzzle of understanding why the AQ isn't able to tell you much, and that piece is called the positive predictive value. The idea is to take the sensitivity and specificity and put them in practical terms, and this value does that by telling you how likely it is that you have a condition if you have a positive value on the test.
This is where the AQ starts running into some serious problems - the positive predictive value is somewhere between 8% and 12%. This means that even if you have a positive value on the test, you are only about 10% likely to have Asperger's or high-functioning autism. The other 90% of the time the test is just wrong.
If that doesn't make any sense to you, perhaps an example would make the picture clearer.
Say you are looking at a group of 10,000 people and that we can assume that 1% of the people have any form of autism. How many people will the AQ correctly identify, how many will it fail to identify, and how many will it falsely identify?
The first thing we need to know is how many of the cases of autism we would expect to be classified as Asperger's or high-functioning autism. While there isn't a good answer to this question, I think it would be reasonable to assume that 25% of all of the people with autism fall into one of those two groups. I suspect that the actual number would be less than this, but this number is good enough for this example.
So, with 10,000 people, we would expect 100 of them to have any form of autism and 25 of them to have Asperger's or high-functioning autism. Given what has been found in studies that looked at the validity of the AQ, we would expect that the AQ would correctly identity 20 of that 25 (80% sensitivity) and miss 5 out of the 25. We would also expect that 2% of the rest of the population would be falsely identified as having Asperger's or high-functioning autism, or roughly 200 people.
If we put that all together, we would find that, out of the 220 people identified by this test, only 20 would actually be correctly identified and another 5 would be missed. Hence the positive predictive value would be about 9.1%, which translates roughly to a 1 in 10 chance of being correctly identified.
Now, just to nitpick my own argument and be completely honest, one possible source of error in the above analysis is what the AQ would show for the 75 other cases of autism. Would it be able to label them as having autism or would it miss them as well? The short answer is that we don't know because this test has never been validated in this population. No published research has shown how well the AQ does at detecting classic autism, PDD-NOS, Retts, or CDD in a large group of people and, without that information, it is simply impossible to know how well it would perform.
But, for the sake of argument, lets assume that the AQ works the same for every person with autism rather than just the higher functioning ones. If you use the same assumptions that I used above, you would find that a positive result in the test would give you a 1 in 3.5 chance (or about 30%) of actually having autism.
The bottom line is that even if you get a high score on the Autism Quotient you are not likely to autism. So if you think you might have autism, don't take a random test on the Internet - go talk to a professional instead.
My score on the AQ is 47, though I did not take that test as a "parlour game" on Facebook, which seems to me to be a total debasement of the principle.
ReplyDeleteI took my test as part of the research cohort when the test was being devised, though it seems that my criticism of the test was not taken all that seriously.
I do think the motives behind the test's origins and the actions of its devisors (in releasing it and the other tests in the Cambridge battery, for use copyright free by bona fide researchers) is noble enough because I have grave misgivings about various other protocols such as ADOS and DISCO, which are not available, expensive and highly proprietry.
Just to reiterate the material you've already quoted: this test is NOT diagnostic, but it can be an interesting tool for getting a sense of whether you do have some of the traits of high functioning autism/aspergers. Obviously if it were that easy to diagnose autism, we wouldn't need a whole army of specialists!
ReplyDeleteOf course, I agree: if you do feel you may be diagnosable on the spectrum, it makes sense to see a professional. The problem is that there are not all that many professional psychologists, neurologists, etc. with real experience diagnosing adults with autism spectrum disorders.
Lisa
I have to yell at my boyfriend about this, because, he thinks he is autistic from this when he isint.
DeleteExcept of course that majority of professionals don't know what autism is either.
ReplyDeleteHow true and how very worrying. I have ASC. Finally dxd aged 46. It hs been hell and the health service is a sham on the whole. Beggars belief.
DeleteAuthor,
ReplyDeleteIt may not be a bad thing that the more comprehensive tests are less available as they really need to be administered by someone who has been properly trained. They are not the sort of thing that just anyone could or should pick up and use.
That argument also applies to the AQ as well and I think that it being published in Wired and on Facebook was a bad thing. I am getting tired of running into people who think that they have autism simply because they are technically oriented and had a high score on the AQ.
I am not saying that these tests should be completely unavailable but just that they should not be published in a way that encourages everyone to take them. I think that "typical" people will look at their high score on the AQ and wonder why people make a big deal about autism. They won't understand that this test doesn't tell you that you have autism (or even features of autism).
Lisa,
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that people won't go to see a professional and will self-diagnose on the basis of the AQ test alone. If you need proof of that just wander over the wrongplanet.net and start reading the discussion forums.
I think we both know that there is a very large different between "traits" of HFA or asperger's and having the real thing. Although I have to wonder if it is even valid to talk about HFA/asperger having distinct "traits" because these "traits" are nothing more than typical human traits taken to extremes.
Being fascinated by numbers or wanting to go to a museum doesn't make you autistic, it makes you a person.
It is all a matter of context.
ReplyDeleteFor some time it has been available via wired, as a sort of "in thing" amongst geeks and I have never been much impressed either by the strange behaviour of on line aspies who have gone to the test and compared scores, the same way as people compare the results of Meyers Briggs or whatever.
It was intended as a serious research tool, where the context makes some sense, and to put it on facebook alongside such quizzes as "which superhero are you" or whatever is to me a travesty because it does devalue the notion of autistic difference in a trivial way as if it does not matter.
It does matter.
As for me even though I was professionally diagnosed I wasn't absolute prepared to accept it until I "peer validated" it, that is to say met and interacted with other people with the condition.
It is of course possible to diagnose a range of things from questionnaires of various types. Just because they have never hitherto been recognised by a clinician doesn't mean they are not there and often because the clinician only has a narrow focus and fails to see a pattern.
My GP, a trained psychiatrist in his other capacity, told me that he was grateful that I had been diagnosed because he began to see it in other patients after that.
As with a lot of conditions, the even a trained GP only sees very small slices of your life, anything that helps put a wider context in is useful, such as the questionnaire having validity to sort out grounds for a referral. In that context the test is not thatdifferent from asking a series of questions of such as "where does it hurt?" "can you lift your arm above your head? "do you have a temperature?" of stuff to rule out or in a physical problem that needs further investigation, or indeed not different outside of the medical context from a dyslexia screening test to determine if one might need extra educational support.
Medical diagnostic procedures in this country are horrendous. Tick box procedures, no holistic approach to patient care and there is heaps of mis leading information out there. CAMHS are horrendous and the specialists are like gold dust..... infact one of the greatests crisis of the modern world is MIS INFORMATION and the SHARING of it. I agree with pretty much all you have written.
Delete"The question then becomes if you take the Autism Quotient test and score high enough, how likely are you to actually have autism? It turns out that the answer is not very likely - the odds are about 1 in 10. To say that the opposite way, if you had a group of ten people who all scored high (over 32), nine of them would not have autism."
ReplyDeleteThe above appears to imply a true positive rate of 10%, or a sensitivity of 10% for the AQ test.
"According to a recent paper that I was reading, the AQ has been demonstrated to find 80% of the target group (sensitivity 80%) while only misidentifying 2% of the rest (specificity ~ 98%)."
The above states a sensitivity of 80% for the AQ test.
These statements appear contradictory. Could you please elaborate or cite the sources?
I thought I went into all of that in the main post, but the short version is this.
DeleteThe 80% is the sensitivity and the 10% is the positive predictive value.
The sensitivity is the number of people who have the condition that are correctly identified. So if you have a group of 1,000 people and 5 of them actually have HFA and the test picks up 4 of the 5, then the sensitivity is 80%.
The positive predictive value, on the other hand, looks at the entire population and tells you how many of the population were correctly identified. So for that same 1,000 people, if the test told you that 20 people had HFA who didn't then your chance of being correctly identified as positive is about 16%.
The above example assumes that the actual number of people with HFA is about 0.5% of the population which is a little on the high side. The positive predictive value is going to change as the condition becomes more common but the sensitivity isn't.
There are links to the concepts in the main body of the post.
Another problem with the AQ is that it can't reliably tell the difference between HFA and schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is more common in adults than HFA so that makes the AQ even worse. See here - http://autismjabberwocky.blogspot.com/2010/11/hazards-of-self-diagnosis.html
The bottom line here is that you can't assume that you are on the spectrum simply because you get a high score on the AQ.
Thank you for the explanation. I had misread the definition of sensitivity vs. positive predictive value. Thanks again.
DeleteWhat about how likely it is to be autistic when several online tests have pointed to non autistic? I cannot relate to most autistic traits but have some family that thinks I'm autistic due to some autism symptoms. I'm half deaf so some questions regarding social interaction can be hearing related. I definitely didn't have any social or communication problems in high school. It was not hard for me. And I understand nonverbal communication and sarcasm, may not respond to it sometimes because I'm quiet too. I feel more comfortable communicating with friends rather than family. And my upbringing, I didn't feel like my mom listened to me and caused me to withdraw from my mom a lot of times and had music as an outlet for pain that I kept bottled up inside. Close family says I hyper focus. But I may talk about something but I don't lose focus on other things. I can still maintain focus on several things but I don't think family realizes that. Close family also says I keep going on about the same thing. But I don't feel I'm listened to or taken seriously, and on deep issues that bother me I could bring it up again because it's an issue that's not resolved. I never have this problem with friends. I never keep bringing the same things up again with friends. I don't feel the need to repeat myself because I feel listened to.
DeleteI'd be interested in the heredity aspect - like how many autistic children have parents who score high on the AQ, despite not having autism themselves. (I actually have ADD which residuals causes every self-diagnosing autism test for me to be positive!) Perhaps this is something Simon Baron Cohen has already looked at, though. Thanks for the informative post!
ReplyDeleteThat is actually a really interesting question! and a great way to make use of the AQ test.
DeleteI have ASC. 100% sure my father has it too...... he would never ever ever even consider looking into it! I firmly believe that ASC is hereditary and traits are what they are.... still have to be managed despite whether a pro tells you you have ASC or NOT..... it is what it is.
DeleteHi M.J.
ReplyDeleteJust curious, what is your occupation? Are you a Statistician?
(This isn't some sort of snarly underhand-comment, I am really curious)
Apologise if I could find that info elsewhere on the blog, I couldn't find much info in the 'about' section and have only read a couple of posts.
I don't agree with you about everything you write, but I like your number crunching and rigour.
Ps. If I don't reply back again in a timely manner, then it is because my Wordpress comment feed don't keep track of comments on other blogging platforms, and I may forget to manually visit your blog to see if there is a reply.
Hi Mados,
DeleteNo, I'm not a statistician but I have some education in statistics and I spend a lot of my professional life dealing with analysis and calculation. I don't really like to go into more detail than that for a variety of reasons.
And I don't mind in the least when people disagree with me. In a way, I actually prefer it because you rarely learn anything new from people who agree with you.
Thank you for your answer. Ok then...
DeleteI have a bit of education in Statistics too (a couple of subjects: Statistics and Market Analysis... and subjects that weren't Stats but which Stats was a prerequisite for, like Cultural Sociology, American Studies, British Studies, Globalization from an American Perspective, et.c.). Stats started with a crash course called 'how to lie with Statistics', about the misuse of Stats in news media etc. I don't use Stats at all. Except I work as a research interviewer (quant) and frequently need to explain basic principles of statistics to explain to respondent why I can't just replace them with the household next door. So that refreshes my mind a little bit, although I must admit that I have forgotten most of what I learned.
Re. disagreeing, I agree with that:-) Disagreement is usually healthy, as long as it is based on mutual respect and willingness to try to understand others' perspectives.
I have one more curious question: have you taken the AQ test yourself? Just based on the writing style of the few of your posts I've read (rigour, structure, topic focus, perseverance, consistent adhering to chosen logic, black & white thinking et.c) I imagine you would score quite high. (no insult intended! as you say, a high score is not in any way a diagnosis, it just highlights a certain type of mindset, e.g. often an engineer/geeky/nerdy type of person)
DeleteIts been a long time since I took it but my AQ score wasn't that high, if I am remembering correctly.
DeleteI find it interesting that the things that you mention aren't really associated with autism as a whole and shouldn't translate into a high score on an autism screening test. They are associated with one of the stereotypes about autism, the extreme male brain theory, but they aren't necessarily part of the larger spectrum of behaviors.
For example, people with autism have restricted interests which can sometimes translate into perseverance but more often just takes the form of fixation or obsession.
Re. word verification: is it possible to turn that stuff off for repeat commentators? I have already proven that I am not a robot. The word verification process is difficult and tedious, and why punish people who want to interact with you on your blog with a straining visual exam every time they want to contribute.
ReplyDeleteThe word verification (captcha) isn't something that I can turn on or off, unfortunately. They are a part of the blogger platform.
DeleteThank you for posting this...I am one of those helpless quiz takers.
ReplyDeleteI scored a 22 on the AQ...but after reading this article, I still strongly believe that I have some sort of a mental disorder. I struggle greatly with verbal communication...it is almost like whenever I want to speak, I literally can't, because it almost feels like my brain shuts down, and I can't bring myself to talk aloud. I used to just think that maybe it was because I was extremely shy, but because of recent events in the past year, I wouldn't consider myself shy anymore. In fact, I would consider myself confident-it is my lack of the ability to communicate my feelings and thoughts aloud often that pulls me up short. What I am writing right now, I would never be able to say aloud, because my mind just wouldn't be able to handle the strain of it-I would start to stutter and then the words would disappear from my thoughts. It's sometimes almost like trying to remember that really important dream that you had before you woke up in the morning-it's nearly impossible! I do unusually well in school, my test scores are way above the expectations, I've read at college level since elementary school, and yet my mind puts up a wall whenever I hear people talk (unless I can look at their lips to read what they're saying)or when I try to speak. I'm desperate for this phenomenon to be explained, and after reading this article, hopefully I will finally get up the nerve to speak with my mom about seeking professional help about it. I'm really hoping that they will have answers...it would be a relief to know that I had autism or something similar; it would all finally be explained. :)
Thank you.
Your blog is great so far ... I just wanted to say you are right that people are using these tests to self diagnose. I didn't realise the test had been publicised on Facebook / Wired. This explains why my doctor-shopping friend ended up finding out about it, and eventually going to the Cambridge centre to get "diagnosed". Knowing my friend as well as I do, they will certainly have read all the tests beforehand and done their best to get the diagnosis - and the researchers also had an agenda of needing high-functioning "aspies" to justify funding. It has been irritating the hell out of me as this person is not remotely autistic/asperger ... It is also making me sceptical about how many people there are out there who are self diagnosed or who have similar ropey diagnoses. I've noticed it seems like 99% of people who call themselves aspergers online are "self diagnosed", and that even a lot of people who aren't sound quite normal to someone who grew up as the class nerd in the 70s (ie me). Not saying that there aren't people who truly warrant these diagnoses, but I keep remembering that old adage about "no disorder without disability".
ReplyDeleteYes this is a personal rant. Sorry. Anyway, I like your blog. Just read your post about people with Aspergers not wanting to be called autistic and being hypocrites ... it was spot on. The friend I mentioned above has weaseled their way into an influential position in that community. I don't think they will like their label nearly as much when it changes - and also I wonder how quickly they would ditch it if forced medication was on the cards? Probably suddenly change to claiming to be normal and just misunderstood ...
QUESTION!!! It was brought to my attention of someone I know pretty well that I might be on the autistic spectrum due to some of the traits I have. I haven't taken any tests since ALL online tests seem to be bogus I just stay away. Any idea what type of health professional I need to see? A general doctor? A psychologist? what?! I dont have a primary doctor right now so I dont want to pay a $25 copay to go to the wrong doctor. any suggestions
ReplyDeleteI would suggest finding a psychologist or psychiatrist in your area. But not all professionals are going to have experience with diagnosing autism in adults so you might want to talk to a local agency that deals with autism or your local chapter of autism speaks (or a similar organization) to see if they have any suggestions.
DeleteGood luck.
There is a list of the prpfessionals that have experience on the cdc wedsite and others if u google it I cant remember the site but it was linked some where on the cdc one. Good luck
DeleteYou base your points on this test only on examples and assumptions.I would like you to give some sources of your observations.Where in the books, the internet, or people or any other sources you find that sensitivity and specificity is had to do with an autism test, or about the statistics of people that is more likely to be missed by the test? Honestly I don't ever think that any person scored like 18 or 20 something on the test does have autism.This is because the test did question the people about some autistic traits-like do they stim. notice details ,etc. However, I would like you to cite some sources so that your points became clearer to me.
ReplyDeleterefreshingly - lots of intelligent convo's but still lost re online autism analysis
ReplyDeleteWhen I answer honestly on that test, I score a 38. I say honestly because for some things, such as whether I enjoy social occasions, I have to really look inside myself. I have, over the years, pushed myself to become more social. I have forced myself to smile and behave more outgoing when in social situations, but I often still am misconstrued as "stuck up" or awkward, and I always feel very out of place. When I was a child, I was extremely shy, but always very talkative at home. I have always been more comfortable in one-on-one situations. I was extremely blunt as a teenager and young adult, and once I became a mother at 22, I realized I needed to be more tactful and forced myself to learn communication skills and social skills, but I needed college courses to do this because they weren't something I just picked up. I have been working on this for years, and I am now 36 and much better at it, but it is a constant struggle. I would still prefer to stay home and feel ostracized from my family and society in general. My boyfriend says there is nothing wrong with me, and the one social occasion where I met his friends, they all seemed to like me. I am pretty enough & have physical attributes I can play up which helps me with men, so that usually the problems I have are with women, who expect more socializing than I can provide. Still, I can gab for hours with my three best friends, as long as it is one on one. I have extreme difficulty paying attention to more than one thing at a time. The few things I am good at, I am very good at. My best friend used to compare me to Spock and my boyfriend has compared me to Data. I have all the symptoms for "Sluggish Cognitive Tempo" except for the inability to concentrate; I can concentrate on one thing to the exclusion of all others for hours. I can read a book of fiction and it is like the world falls away. I can't even hear people speak, I am so absorbed. I also think extremely visually - the littlest phrases create pictures in my mind. I don't know if I belong on the Autistic Spectrum somewhere, but I obviously have some overlap. I wonder if I should see someone about it, but at this point it just seems too late for much to be done. Oh, I also had extreme difficulty picking up on certain social "rules" other people seemed to understand very well, such as not dating my exboyfriend's brother or a best friend's ex boyfriend. I didn't understand why that would be unacceptable because, in my mind, the relationship was over, what was the big deal. I don't care if any of my friends want to date my exes, for example. That is just one example, but I have many I can't think of right now.
ReplyDeleteThis post almost sounds like something I would have written - with the exception of some minor details and with a gender switch (poster is female - I'm male). I also scored a 38 on the online test. However, the online test was used as one phase of 'self-diagnosis' of Aspergers. I have also used the EQ (Empathy Quotient) and CAST (Childhood Autism Spectrum Test), though CAST left me with 11 unanswered questions (that I couldn't recall or know) I still scored a 16 with a 15 indicating possible Aspergers. Additionally, I have done a great deal of research online about it. I'm 69 and can look back on a long history of dealing with the things Asperger Syndrome represents. Aside from the fact that it's far too late in the game for an official diagnosis to make any difference for me, I also live in a rural area and there would be no practical way for me to become diagnosed nor could it in any way be considered cost effective even if there were - at this point in my time.
DeleteThe poster of this message is fortunate to know this about herself at 36 because it will make a huge difference in the rest of her life and the way she lives it.
I can only say "if only I had known then what I realize now..." What a drastic difference it could have made in my life - particularly my relationships. I have lived alone for a number of years; I have 1 friend in the general area and don't often communicate with her; I speak briefly with a couple of neighbors (I only even am acquainted with the two nearest of them) on occasions when we're outside at the same time; I'm pretty much a hermit. In Winter I may go a couple of weeks without speaking even briefly with another human being. I have become accustomed to and well satisfied with being alone - for the most part. Discovering what I very recently have about AS at least helps me make sense of many things in my life from childhood (when there was no such thing as Autism or Asperger Syndrome in the early to mid-1950s) to the present day. I am very thankful for the tests and to have taken them and become more enlightened about myself and my life.
The very worst advice on this blog is to NOT take the test! Obviously a positive result should be followed up with more research and, for some, even a diagnosis (assuming they have the considerable wherewithal to do that) if 'being official' will provide positive benefits for them. Now, it is correctly stated that this test is not generally for Autism - it is designed for HFA/AS and that is the context in which the test should be considered. For that, used properly, it can be very valuable.
"The very worst advice on this blog is to NOT take the test! Obviously a positive result should be followed up with more research and, for some, even a diagnosis (assuming they have the considerable wherewithal to do that) if 'being official' will provide positive benefits for them"
DeleteYou misunderstand, it isn't "being official" that is the benefit. The "benefit" is that you get the correct diagnosis and thus know what the correct therapeutic options are. There are many other conditions, such as schizophrenia, that will give you similar results on self assessments for autism. And giving yourself more self administered tests will make the problem worse rather than better.
Did you also try screens for depression, mania, schizophrenia, adhd, and other mental health disorders or did you just settle on autism? You say that you live in a rural area, have you ever seen a person with autism face to face? If not I suggest you go find some and try to talk to them - although any local meeting of self-advocates don't count as meeting people with autism.
Well I do not mean to intrude but I'm a kid and I've taken many but I didn't just take them like games on Facebook, I looked them up because I had been wondering ever since my friend pointed out that I seem to be autistic, she had lived with an autistic little boy before and she sees the symptoms in me so now I'm just Wondering What is true and stuff. I scored like 82% on one before.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteWhat the heck is "cdc" ? I mean, the website to find professionals? I am in my 60's; been taking all these online Aspie tests; they all say I have it. Still, I have been dx many things in my life (No one can figure me out...). This is just one more dx. It sounds as though it may pick up any sort of dx, or people who run the gamut of not being "average" (" the mean"?) I also score high on the ADD tests. Also, the PTSD tests. Ho hum. So what does this mean, if anything? I am crazy? Would like better answers, but at my age, just too difficult. I am a bit like the other "ANONYMOUS" on here, in personality traits. Am also wondering if it just dx gifted, but introverted persons?
ReplyDeleteI score 42 on these test (just to preface what follows)
ReplyDeleteI strongly disagree with what you are suggesting, perhaps you underestimate the type of person likely to feel the need to seek an AQ test but from my experience and the reason I took one is that I demonstrate not one or two autistic traits but almost all of them and have done so since being very young. I'm 30 now and have developed a social tool-kit which I rely on extremely strongly everyday. I don't have a friend to bounce my worries off and have increasingly alienated family. I know I've done these things, I don't really understand how or what I could have done. My point being that taking this test provides a tool for people without a social touchstone to know that what they experience is not normal. Until recently I just thought I was a bit odd, the more I learn the more I realise that what I've been feeling is actually not normal. That my concerns about lacking, for want of a better description 'emotional IQ', were actually very valid. This test allows someone in my situation to quantify their feelings of dissociation and lets them know that seeking help is a valid course of action. Without this, speaking from experience, I would have continued to self-analyse instead of seeking a professional opinion.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete