Neurodiversity research using the Aspie Quiz

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The point is that you are calling using the term "neurodiversity" to refer to just one of these alleged just two distinct neurotypes.


Really? Widely known where? You're actually the one and only person whom I've ever seen use the term "neurodiverse" to refer specifically to the "larger autistic phenotype." Lots of people do mis-use "neurodiverse" to mean "neurodivergent," but I've never seen anyone except you advocate the idea that all differences from NT are part of a single phenotype.


That it's a "false premise" is at best highly debatable. Be that as it may, if indeed your theory is correct, then your continued use of the term "neurodiversity" is as absurd as it would have been for Johannes Kepler to continue using the word "epicycle" as part of his theory, even though his whole point was to develop a simpler theory that got rid of the need for epicycles entirely.


Your theory is more akin to a theory that gets rid of the entire concept of gravity, and replaces it with something else entirely, than it is to a theory that merely finds some new background for gravity. It would NOT make sense for such a radical theory to continue to use the word "gravity."


One good reason to change your terminology might be that your current choice of terminology might be one of the reasons (though probably not the only or main reason) why your theory is not (as far as I am aware) taken seriously by very many people in the world of psychology. Academic papers are expected to use terminology that makes internally coherent sense. Yours does not.


But usually terms do not get re-defined to mean their exact opposite, except when someone is being ironic and/or playing political propaganda games.


How so? How would "neurodivergence" give more of a wrong cue than "neurodiversity" -- which gives a very wrong cue and also makes you sound like you are ignorant of the meaning of the word "diversity"?


At least among educated people, you are almost guaranteed to lose that battle and make yourself look utterly ridiculous in the process. Almost anyone who knows what the word "diversity" means can easily see that your use of the term "neurodiversity" is inappropriate, once that is pointed out to them.

I now think that the most accurate possible term for your concept would be "RDOS autistic phenotype." And it's a term that no one could possibly steal from you to mean something else.

No, I use neurotypical and neurodiverse. I think people in general understand that neurotypical is the "normal" neurotype and that neurodiverse is the other neurotype. When I use neurodiversity I refer to both neurotypes.



I think that is too late. The Aspie Quiz paper was published in 2013, and two more have already been published with this terminology. Besides, I've had many papers rejected, but only in one case was the reason the use of neurodiverse, and it seemed more like an excuse to shoot it down than a valid reason.



That's not how I interpret it. Neurodiversity is both neurotypes, but "diverse" in neurodiverse refers to human diversity in the sense that it is the odd traits, while neurotypical describes the "normal" traits. And two sets of traits IS diversity. I think it is you that interpret the terms incorrectly.



Because "neurodivergence" comes with a notion that humans by default have the neurotypical traits, and that the divergence traits are somehow on a continuum with these normal traits, which is false. Humans are NOT neurotypical by default. Humans originally consisted of two subspecies, and when these mixed and diverged we ended up with two spectrums of traits (neurotypes). These traits are not related and you cannot explain the odd traits by using psychology developed for the typical. You also cannot understand the function of the odd traits by looking at typical traits.



No way. I will not use autistic, Asperger or Aspie since these are associated with psychiatric diagnosis and thus gives the wrong impression that the odd traits are dysfunctions rather than diversity. In fact, by having "diversity" in the description I can make sure that people will not think of dysfunctions but of human diversity. The use of phenotype would also be wrong since we are not talking about a phenotype but a spectrum. And I will not use RDOS or any other personal reference.

Let's go deeper into the arguments from the neurodiversity movement.

Here is what they say about neurodivergent:

This implies that neurodivergent is just some cludges to the neurotypical mind. That's a view I ABSOLUTELY DON'T want to spread.



I don't think it is valid to include issues that are acquired. That sabotages the whole point of the neurodiversity movement and makes the argument: "so you are sick or disordered after all?" potentially valid. That's because it's a given that alterations and damages to the brain are disorders. It simply weakens that argument about neurodiversity not being a disorder.



There are so many things wrong with this. First, it's invalid to use medical diagnoses as a basis for different types of neurodivergence. That's because those are defined as DISORDERS, and neurodiversity should not be considered as disorders. Second, being epileptic is a disorder, and so should not be considered as part of neurodiversity at all.

Then about neurotypical:



Here they make their own grand mistake themselves and claim that individuals can be neurotypical. If the argument would have any kind of consistency, then being neurotypical would be defined as having a set of traits that are "normal", and since it is defined as a set of traits, it's only valid for groups and not for individuals. This error is based on the assumption that the basic human condition is neurotypical, and that all types of neurodivergence are pathological variation to that phenotype. Which is completely contrary to the claims that we should view neurodivergence / neurodiversity as healthy human variation.



Here they spell it out in concrete wording too: "Neurotypicality is the condition from which neurodivergent people diverge". This is a completely absurd idea that will hamper research on neurodiversity forever. It makes it valid to try to explain autistic traits in the context of neurotypical traits. That's because neurotypical functioning is assumed to be the role-model for humans, and so we must be able to explain any divergence from this based on neurotypicality. It makes it valid to force ABA onto autistic children (they should be possible to change since they are just quirks on top of a neurotypical individual). It makes it valid to give autistics neurotypical dating advice since they surely work like neurotypicals down under their quirks. And if somebody is asexual, it's valid to use the small amount of neurotypical asexuals that lack sex drive as a role-model for autistic asexuality (it certainly isn't valid since the mechanisms are not the same).

In short, using neurodivergent would be completely wrong in my context (my results do not measure the difference from the neurotypical condition). I think the use of "neurodiverse" to mean the whole innately neurodivergent population is valid. I don't support the view of the multiple neurodivergent, and I certainly don't believe neurodivergent styles should be defined in the context of disorder labels. I think that both neurotypical and neurodiverse (my usage) are primarily neurotypes (even phenotypes), and so are only valid as statistical measures on groups, but it is still valid to apply this to individuals that have over a cutoff of the traits of the neurotype. Much like you can set an ASD diagnosis when somebody has above some predefined amount of autistic traits.

As for why Chronbach Alpha (CA) is much higher in Aspie Quiz than in the AQ, I think the major reason is the number and diversity of items.

Different analysis of Aspie Quiz:
All items: .974
ND talent: .747
NT talent: .864
ND sensory: .882
NT sensory: .788
ND comm: .883
NT comm: .873
ND relation: .839
NT relation: .663
ND social: .785
NT social: .881
Talent: .882
Sensory: .905
Comm: .926
Relation: .837
Social: .901
ND: .954
NT: .952

There is a definite relation between the number of items used in the analysis and high CA results. Which kind of proves that in order to create a test for autistic traits that have high CA values (and thus good consistency), you need many (50+) items that have low correlations to each other. With around 50-60 items, Aspie Quiz has CA of .95 and with 117 it has .97. Aspie Quiz has average inter-item covariance of .15 when using many items. When I run the AQ test, it had CA .94 with 50 items and average inter-item covariance of .24. In the same version, Aspie Quiz had 153 items, CA of .98 and average inter-item covariance of .12.

Papers on the AQ test that analyses the different dimensions have poor results with CA values similar to those of groups in Aspie Quiz. Given that group selection in the AQ test and in Aspie Quiz is sane, it means that when you try to use less diverse traits this results in poor consistency. Thus, there are no good sub-groups for autistic traits and trying to find such will fail.