Did extremely well on face, voice and film tests

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OK I am confused now. I suspect I have AS and I am waiting for an assessment. But I just did some tests about recognising emotions in face, voice and film clips - and I scored better than average for an NT. My scores were really excellent. I wasn't expecting that!

Most of the film clips seemed very clear to me. Only in one, where there was a lot of background noise, I felt the confusion that I feel in real life. It has suddenly occurred to me that maybe I don't have a problem reading faces or voices at all - I just have a problem with focusing on something when there is a lot of noise and a lot going on around me.

If I had to add up a column of figures in a noisy place I would suffer the same confusion - and yet I don't consider myself to be bad at maths. Maybe my only problem is with focusing - and it just so happens that the most noisy and distracting occasions when we are expected to focus are social ones, so it looks like I have a social problem.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

Ok, so the tests were not the assessment? These sound like tests a psychologist might administer to test for AS? Just guessing on that, I haven't been assessed yet either.

That's great that you did better than you thought you would!

I notice your age is 36 -- I'm just throwing this out there for what it's worth, but, could it be that you do have AS but you have learned by rote the meaning of people's facial expressions and emotions? Sometimes, maybe for some people, the older they get, the more years of experience they rack-up in observing and interacting with people, and if you study people enough, you can sometimes mechanically gain the skill of interpreting them better. I'm not saying this is everyone, but I've noticed some WP members mentioning they were able to do something like this.

I know when I was 13 I was very into a pop-culture doctor who was on TV a lot at the time, who published a book on human behavior, and I learned a lot of body language from that. Perhaps over 36 years you have done a similar thing even if you didn't start out naturally knowing how to interpret people?

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I just did them myself online. They are available here http://www.aspietests.org/

I did the Cambridge Face/Voice Battery ones and the Reading the Mind in Films one. I chose them because they don't rely on self-reporting. The AQ and similar tests ask you questions about yourself. I always score highly Aspie on them. I am worried now that I might be falsely self-reporting as more Aspie-ish than I really am.



Yes I suppose I should feel happy about it. But I just feel confused. I was so sure I had found the reason for my social difficulties and sensory overload issues. Also I really want this diagnosis because if I ever want to be employed again (currently I am self-employed) I will need some help in the workplace so that I don't get bullied and/or fired again. I'm worried that if I don't have AS, I may never find out what is wrong with me, if anything, or if I am just "weird". Employers are not legally obliged to protect the weird!



This is possible. I know that I have spent a lot of time and energy (actually, almost all of my time and energy for many years) trying to work out what is going on with people. I've learnt a lot from books and TV. Also, while I was doing the tests I was aware of engaging my intellectual mind rather than feeling it intuitively. But on the other hand, I didn't just get loads of answers right, I also did the tests in a very short time. So I can't have been thinking that much more than the average person, since it took me LESS than average time to do so!

Oh well - I suppose when I finally get assessed, I can say all this to the psychologist and I will have to trust their decision whichever way it goes.

Yeah, I haven't even tried to complete the face, voice and film screening tests because: 1) the tests and their research documentation seem to be developing, but not finished, 2) like others here, I wonder if the tests' efficacy will be determined to be more accurate among children with AS, and 3) my lifelong experience in a movie-theatre family watching thousands of movies with faces, voices and situations suggests that my test scores would be very NT, and, therefore, not an accurate reflection of my AS. But, hey, not every Aspie has every AS characteristic. The ones I do have are very obvious.

This isn't something I'd be too worried about, because with time you can learn expressions and tones. I just took the test myself with results being...

You scored 75.0% in 5.0 seconds. Faces: 68.0% Voices: 82.0%


The average score for males with ASD is 65.1% in 10.8 seconds. Faces: 69.6% Voices: 60.6%
The average score for females with ASD is 69.6% in 11.6 seconds. Faces: 68.4% Voices: 70.8%
The average score for males with suspected ASD is 70.6% in 11.9 seconds. Faces: 72.7% Voices: 68.4%
The average score for females with suspected ASD is 70.5% in 11.5 seconds. Faces: 71.3% Voices: 69.6%
The average score for male neurotypicals is 75.4% in 13.3 seconds. Faces: 77.1% Voices: 73.6%
The average score for female neurotypicals is 72.7% in 10.9 seconds. Faces: 78.4% Voices: 67.0%

Honestly while doing the tests I started to become very very confused during the voice one, so I thought I did poorly on it. In contrast, I thought I did very well on the facial test, but this is obviously not the case. Although, I have always been highly reactive to changes in tone IRL even though I do not understand the cause. The averages don't really seem to "add up" when you compare them all. I do think this is something that would be much more accurate among children and not adults since you gain experience throughout the years.

PS: Anybody know what the in __ seconds indicates? Mine is so much lower than the average.