Aspie quiz

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To CozPoz2802: It is my understanding that people with AS can have social anxiety. However, social anxiety is NOT a symptom of AS. If you think you have AS because you are really socially anxious and it makes you socially awkward, you probably don't have AS. You'd probably have an anxiety disorder. But if you are suffering from some of the social difficulties that people with AS have, such as difficulty reading people's faces, keeping eye contact, carrying on a conversation comprised mostly of "chit-chat" or smalltalk, missing the subtext in conversations, etc. this can in many cases cause anxiety. In this case, however, it is anxiety in a social situation more than social anxiety, as the term is coined, understand?

On the other hand, I'm fairly certain that it's not impossible for a person to have both Asperger's and SAD. I'm not a psychiatrist. In the readings I have done, many experts have talked about social anxiety as was related to Asperger's. It is not uncommon to be socially anxious with AS. The key is discovering where your anxiety is born from. Are you anxious because you're in a social situation, or do the difficulties you have in social situations make you anxious?

In response to thread: I scored really high on this test. I think somewhere in the range of 170 or 180? I could be wrong though. I also have a bad habit of reading the symptom in the question because I know what symptom the question is trying to get at, so I answer according to that instead of what the question is actually asking. Probably skews my scores just a little. XD

Your Aspie score: 144 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 61 of 200
You are very likely an Aspie

Hehe, you are very likely ADD

My larger concern with these tests (and maybe I was too glib in my deconstruction of this one) is that I have difficulty comprehending what is being asked. The two online quizzes I've seen (this one and the one at wired.com) look like they weren't "field tested" with a range of real people, especially considering that the quiz is aimed at people who take things literally and have above-average reading comprehension skills. I don't know how valid the results of the quiz would be. I couldn't answer questions like "do you like making traps", so any of the multiple-choice responses I chose would be wrong. This quiz is certainly long enough that perhaps the noise of incomprehensible questions wouldn't affect the score significantly.

I probably over-think the questions, but I still find "do you have trouble reading clocks" awfully confusing. I assume they can't possibly mean looking at the upper-right corner of my computer desktop at the clock there which is digital. I wonder if they mean low-functioning autism where someone might not be able to tell time at all. Or, is this an old test, and do they mean the old analogue clocks with hands? I haven't seen one of those in a decade or more. I would have trouble remembering how to read one, just like I'd have trouble using a buggy whip or decoding Roman numerals, but answering "yes" to the question would be false if they're asking "are you so autistic you can't tell time" and I'm answering "I haven't seen an analogue clock in so long I can't remember how to read it".

Multiply that by 100+ questions and I give up. What I'm trying to do is figure out enough context to give a reasonable answer, and I can't. Probably has something to do with executive function deficit.

The one on the wired.com quiz about "do you like dates" is a particularly difficult one to put into context - do they mean going out to a movie with a girl (social interaction), chronological dates like when the Civil War happened (autistic fixations), or the little things like raisins you cook with? English overloads words (try to think of all the meanings of "spring" some time!) so it's hard to figure out context-free questions. Anyone who "field tested" this quiz would get real-world feedback and pick a less-overloaded word than "dates".

I think that the issue you raise points out one of the reasons that a self-diagnosis cannot take the place of a formal evaluation by a qualified professional. Ideally, tests like these should be given with the shrink present, and one could ask for clarification as needed. Even if the response was, "whichever way you want to interpret it," the fact that you asked would give him additional information to use in making his determination.

As for field testing them, I'm not quite sure how to respond.

The AQ test (the one on Wired) has been, for quite a few years, one of the "official" diagnostic tools for evaluation of AS, and has been revised several times. While it can't be used by itself to make a DX, high scores on it are highly correlated to an AS DX.

While the Aspie Quiz is not a formally accepted tool, I have seen quite a few people claim that it is actually an even better predictor of whether someone has Asperger's or not. Some of those claims are backed up by statistical analysis - which I do not understand, but it's not just someone making a claim with nothing to support it. There was an active thread recently where a poster did such an analysis - if you understand statistics, you could find the thread and check his math. It, also, has been around for several years and has gone through several revisions in an effort to increase its accuracy. The author of that test posts here sometimes, and seems quite open to suggestions for improving it. You may want to email him with your thoughts.

To mori_pastel: I'm pretty sure it's the difficulties I have in social situations that make me anxious, because I'm okay with friends/family etc. people that know me well, essentially, I can make more eye contact with them and they're used to my 'weirdness' and the fact that I don't pick up on everything, and they're willing to explain jokes and problems they have in higher detail to me, if I need them to.
Anyway, if it's someone I don't know well, or I've never met them, or I have to talk to a crowd of people (like a presentation) if makes me nervous and anxious because there's so many people to concentrate on and try to read and I just...get confused and my brain shuts down, y'know? That's what's really making me anxious, there's too much for me to try and do, it's kinda hard to explain for me...

177, I win

Nevermind about before, I retook the test and I apparently don't have social anxiety
(15(fear) 14(avoidance) = no SAD) but...I think I was pretty high-strung at that point in my life, so...I'll just chill and think things over...

For the sake of giving the quiz the benefit of the doubt, I took it, omitting questions I did not understand by indicating "?" as the answer. I think that's okay, since this test is quite long (likely to be able to correct for omitted questions.

What confused me most was the constant switch between questions that ask "do you..." and "do you not..." since I had to pause and wonder if I should answer "yes, I do/no, I do not" or "yes, I do not/no, I do".

The results:

Your Aspie score: 145 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 52 of 200
You are very likely an Aspie

Besides the gonzo questions, I found two categories of questions hard to answer. One are the "mu!" questions where neither yes nor no is correct, because the situation has never happened to me. The other was the "have others commented" style questions because I'm not around people who comment on me.

The graph I got in the results looks like the old Tempest video game. Is that a good sign or a bad sign?

Your Aspie score: 146 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 66 of 200
You are very likely an Aspie

I'm not actually diagnosed autistic, but i do strongly suspect that i have Aspergers.
Instead (or also) i'm diagnosed as having mild depressive episode, sociophobia and other specific phobia and my psychologist also said that i might develop some personality disorder. But I don't really understand which one and i don't believe that she's saying the truth, because i don't fit the diagnostical criteria of any of those.

I have a problem with all quizzes like this because I can answer every question both strongly yes and strongly no, depending on interpretation. Some people say that proves I have Aspergers.

Your Aspie score: 154 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 70 of 200
You are very likely an Aspie

I took this quiz two years ago..... would like to try it again "just to check" but the link is down at the moment. My youngest son is currently being assessed for having Aspergers..... not sure if I should mention my test scores because I've never been diagnosed but have a whole host of lifelong mental issues that make more sense if you bring the AS into it

LOL
Aspie score: 159 of 200
Neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 44 of 200

Anyone else score as high as me?

Your Aspie score: 134 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 82 of 200
You are very likely an Aspie