November 21, 2011
Take The AQ Test
Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen and his colleagues at Cambridge’s Autism Research Centre have created the Autism-Spectrum Quotient, or AQ, as a measure of the extent of autistic traits in adults. In the first major trial using the test, the average score in the control group was 16.4. Eighty percent of those diagnosed with autism or a related disorder scored 32 or higher. The test is not a means for making a diagnosis, however, and many who score above 32 and even meet the diagnostic criteria for mild autism or Asperger’s report no difficulty functioning in their everyday lives.
I scored 26.
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I scored 16. I’m just an average guy.
24.
18.
I scored 16 but expected to score much higher.
30.
I wouldn’t have guessed.
23, but you can’t ask any of these questions without the context. Sure I’d rather go to a party right now, but I can’t remember the last time I had a social engagement. Would I like to go to a party every weekend? No chance.
Great. Another source of pressure: taking a test to see how I stack up against y’all in the autism department.
I’m a loser. I scored 9.
Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen.
I scored a 17
I scored 18!
So am I, like, the opposite of autistic? And is there a clinical label for that?
“Archivist”
I’ve known some autistic archivists in my day.
22. Why do they bother asking definitely or slightly if it’s one point regardless? …Does asking that earn me autism bonus points?
Sheila “The Opposite of Autistic” Ryan!
Bauman! Them’s fightin’ words!
Give me a second to parse that for social context.
Ryan!
Sarah: They’re a load of Cambridge Autism Research Centre goof-buckets. That’s why.
And no, you do not get extra points for your question. Being a sharp cookie is not the same as being autistic. Or holding a Cambridge research post.
Aw, gaze at my face and read my intentions, Bauman.
Nine!
Nein!
Nine to the power of nine.
The tools to keep a businessman out of the White House are going to be relentless.
That’s a lot of autism.
When we step back and look to the fact there are no facts.
Late to answer. People were over for a little while, we had a good time. I scored 29.
I wouldn’t have guessed that either.
I wouldn’t have guessed it either. I have assburpers. “Wapner, Wapner at 3:OO.”
This week, I’m now on vacation, y’all!
Funemployment! When I return, I’ll work as many hours that come to me in the coming months. (And I will look for hours to fill-in. It’s not my goal to be “on-the-dole” along the way.)
But the company knows I don’t want to do no “snow-work” this season. There are those abler than I to take care of it.
I will find my way for the next four months.
8… Who wants to party and meet new people while not noticing any patterns or memorizing any numbers?
What most people don’t realize is that there are a lot of us Aspies out in public, among you, touching you!!!, and you don’t know it, suckers! In other words, a lot of adults are diagnosed with AS only in their late years (like I [and I scored a 42 on this "quiz," for what it's worth]), having spent their lives learning how to compensate for social deficiencies. Just ask Simone–I can guarantee that this comes as news to him, and I hung out with him at a coffee shop in St. Louis for years. . . at least 994 days, 14 hours, and 33 seconds or so.
Jch, it makes sense in retrospect, but I wouldn’t have guessed it. I just assumed your weirdness was different from my weirdness.
Incidentally, I scored a 14.
My wife tells me that Williams Syndrome is like the opposite of autism.
Pubmed says: “Personality traits include being very friendly [and] trusting strangers…”
Also: Hi. I’m Sam. I scored a 12.
Hi, Sam. You seem very nice. I like you already. There’s something . . . trustworthy about you.
Many of us spend our lives developing coping mechanisms to be able to function in society, whether that is because of an autism-spectrum disorder, depression, bad socialization as a child, or because we’re cynical assholes (fingers crossed on this being in DSM-5).
I don’t really mean anything by that.
I must have been cheating somehow. I scored six.
No! I bet you weren’t. I tried my best to answer as honestly as possible, not gaming the thing, given the absolutist framing of the questions.
. . . though in truth I shook my head throughout, given the obvious ‘gaming the test’ opportunities (me like things or me like people?, me like museum or me like theater? — et cetera).
It did make me smile, though, to wind up with a score of 9 on the thing.
On the one hand: many friends and acquaintances have observed (as one did just the other day) that I’m “such a people person.”
Yet I crave my solitude.
At this year’s gathering of flockers, I loved being with so many people of whom I am so fond. Yet after a day in their company, topped with a communal dinner, I had to retreat to ‘my room’ for a couple of hours before rejoining the assembled multitude.
I’m not sure what, if anything, this has to do with soi-disant autism.
Maybe my intolerance for prolonged proximity even with those I really really like is the legacy of an only monkey.
33, though I’d like to take the test without knowing what it’s measuring. I’m one of those people who probably isn’t Aspergers but likes to think they are so I’m probably trying to game the system into proving my belief.
Also, some of those questions need “when sober” appended to them. I thoroughly enjoy social situations when I’m shitfaced. It’s when I’m sober that they bring me out in the sweats.
I answered the questions as fast as I could, without thinking about them. First impression. I also think, shelia, that we can be a basic way and conditioning and experience get layered on top and affect that base. For instance, I was probably the most impossibly trusting wire service newsie who ever practiced. So eventually I went overboard trying to change that. Mistake. It changed who I was for a time anyway and not in a good way. Every profession, unit needs a mix. It’s why Lucien Carr would throw certain stories on my desk and say “This needs the Corlew treatment.” And those weren’t economics or political polls or UN resolutions. They were yarns that needed heart. Then I knew finally that it was okay to have and to show that.
I take the whole thing about as seriously as I do similar quizzes in Parade magazine.
The questions concerning interest in and recall of numbers struck me as especially silly. I do not generally recall strings of numbers that have no significance for me; in other words, I do not store license plate numbers unless there is good reason. I used to have a good memory for my friends’ phone numbers, but that has diminished now that I need only press one or at most two buttons to reach them. I remember birthdays with nigh-on perfect precision if the people matter to me.
Yet all of the questions relating to recall of numbers were scored the same.
Also, Carole, Lucien Carr coining “the Corlew treatment” is pretty much the best thing I have read in a good long while.
All the rest of y’all, you know of Lucien Carr?