Adult Asperger's Assessment (Why it's inaccurate)

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I find the fruit quite fascinating.
Also, on tv when characters introduce their date, I generally find her to be most fascinating when she is wearing a sexy dress.
And I'm quite fascinated that I've actually managed to go on a few dates myself.

So, the answer is Definitely Agree.

What, you mean calendar dates? No, not that interested apart from the old 4/4, 6/6, 8/8, 10/10, 12/12, 5/9, 9/5, 7/11, 11/7 trick where each of those dates fall on the same day. This year that day is Sunday.

I find this whole issue of being oblivious very interesting, and it's something I would like to learn more about, because, as you said, how does one know that one is oblivious? That's kind of the definition of obliviousness: not knowing that one is missing something.

I too think that I am generally more logical that the people around me, and therefore I think my interpretation of situations is more accurate rather than less so, though the minutiae of social interactions are sometimes lost on me.

I was subjected to girl-bullying by a group of online women friends a couple years ago, and now I wonder if it's possible that I misinterpreted it? Yet it seemed very obvious to me at the time, and still does, though no one agreed with me. The nature of this sort of thing is always that the victim is made to look like the bad guy, so I don't have any tangible reason to think I might have been wrong, and I am more logical at ferreting things out than the other people involved. But now I don't know? Has anyone had experiences like this?

Fascinating timeless post, T-Bone!

Thankyou for illustrating one of the issues.

i think i know what you mean here .. i'm guessing logical, or even "accurate" assessments of social behavior doesn't actually shed any light on what's going on between people. the nuance and what they're saying between the lines and with body language is how they're speaking, not with their words or even their thoughts about each other. what i interpret is ideas and they seem to have little to do with anything.

like / dislike, honesty / dishonesty don't count for much - it's how people make each other feel? i don't know. what i see seems like the truth, but then i will notice people acting on completely different assessments of a situation, seemingly appropriately.

my mother asks me endless rhetorical questions and i try to answer them and get frustrated and eventually angry; does she want information? why is she asking me things i don't know the answers to? then she thinks i'm angry at her and interprets it emotionally. she's asking from an emotional place, expecting emotional content back and so that's what she sees. so her assessment of the situation is wrong from my point of view. i hear a question and want to answer it, when i can't i get frustrated. i want her to stop asking me questions i don't have answers to or which she doesn't actually seek literal answers to. who's correct? neither, just different languages.

so i balk at even the phrasing of such a concept as interpreting a situation correctly. correct to one person is not correct to another. no one's right. we all just guess, but the majority is more likely to guess "right" when dealing with other members of the majority.

Women have a tendency to ask rhetorical questions for a few reasons and it generally relates back to evolutionary reasons.

Women, mothers especially, have a biological tendency to be master caretakers/planners. They are the ultimate "office managers" and to do their job, they need information. They not only need to know what is going on around them, but what is going on in the minds of those they have to care for/manage or deal with. They have to have a good feel for these people and they need to be able to predict how these people might respond in certain situations, so they ask these rhetorical questions to form a better definition of the person.

So you see, the nagging mother or wife really should not be blamed for anything as they are doing what they have evolved to do, and thus it ultimately serves the better good of the species.

i'll also add that i think the assessments are really only useful when paired with studying the timing. Attwood had commented on this, saying that the timing was important to determine if answers were reached via intuition or careful deliberation (logic + intellect, the compensation method that lets aspies function without melting down in day to day life).

I agree that the AQ test is too subjective and requires the testee to have quit a bit of self knowledge. I, too, would have claimed that I enjoy social chit-chat back when I was in my early 20s because I loved to talk about my obsessions and was known for talking "too much".
ONLY after I began to learn about AS and suspect I had it when I was in my mid 20s, I began to become more "self aware".

I much prefer the Aspie Quiz

Ooops: forgot to include the Aspie Quiz link- here it is; http://www.rdos.net/eng/Aspie-quiz.php

I agree that the AQ and EQ questions can be problematic and confusing to answer.

However, I must also point out that I consider this thread to be very misleading; what is being discussed is simply the the AQ and EQ questions, and not the Adult Asperger Assessment (AAA) itself.

The AAA uses the AQ, EQ as well as a retrospective CAST (Childhood Aspergers Syndrome Test), filled in by a relative, purely as a way of screening patients before the AAA interview. Though these questions might not be ideal, they give a general preliminary picture. They are not designed to be perfect, but the statistics (80% AS score over 32 on AQ, 80% score 30 or less on EQ, 87.5% score over 15 on CAST) show that they are effective as a screening tool .

The AAA itself takes the form of an interview where answers provided are corroborated and further investigated, and, by the same token, any difficulties/confusions with the questions can be discussed/explained. There are also symptoms in the AAA interview that are judged purely during the interview.

In fact, the point of the AAA was to provide a more rigorous assessment of AS in adults, due to the few required symptoms listed in DSM-IV. The AAA is split into four sections (A-D) and requires the same prerequisites as the DSM-IV criteria. Sections A,B, and C have 5 symptoms and section D has 3. To compare the two, diagnosis under DSM-IV would require 2 or more symptoms from section A and 1 or more from section B. In contrast, AAA diagnosis requires 3 or more in sections A and B. In addition, 3 symptoms are required from C and 1 from D - these sections are additional to DSM-IV criteria and can partially be found in the DSM-IV criteria for autistic disorder.

I would emphasise, therefore, that it is unfair to label the AAA as inaccurate on the grounds listed by the original poster, and hope that I have clarified somewhat what the AAA actually is.

I have long thought that other peoples reactions to me are bizarre in many ways. I always believed they were the ones who were misinterpreting either the situation or what I was saying or even what mood I was in. The only reason I have come to realise that I tend to be oblivious at times is because I am told that I misinterpret people and also by the negative reactions I get from them. Most of the time I don't even realise that I am doing something wrong until people either get angry with me or resort to bullying tactics or their response seems to be so bizarre to me that I find myself wondering if I am even having the same conversation as they are even though we seem to be talking about the same thing.

Ie a discussion on depression starts up and this is something I have had experience with and can talk about. Most of the time I don't have anything to say if its a topic I do not know about so when one does come up I get a bit excited and get carried away. However the responses I get to this puzzle me. Either it seems they believe I am making the conversation about myself (which is not my intention, its just that they say write what you know and I cannot really know what others experience with depression is although I do often throw some science in as well if I know it), or that I am seeking sympathy (I not looking for cyber hugs either) or that I am attention seeking (no I just got carried away talking about a subject I knew about due to personal experience with it) and then I get the emails saying I should not talk openly about my depression on a forum board (why?) and then I state that I do not feel ashamed of my depression and so they will tend to say that I am proud of it (I did not say I was proud of it either) and so on. I often sit there puzzled wondering what the hell all the fuss is over.

People confuse me. They are very strange.

Half the time though I don't realise I've done anything wrong until a big fuss about it breaks out. I also always thought I interpret people correctly but even my support worker says I misinterpret people so now I am even more confused. It gives me a headache trying to figure it out so most of the time I stick to doing my sequin art or something as that is no where near as confusing!

Very good observations, Chronos.

When I took the test, I often struggled with the phrase "Other people frequently tell me that what I’ve said..." because this infers that people abruptly tell you about your faults. I have lived in a few locations in my life and have found that the openness of people vary greatly with location and local culture. In one area I lived at, the people were rather abrupt and were very upfront and would readily tell you anything on their minds; other places not so much as the cultures are rather withdrawn and the people generally keep to themselves (including some in my own family). So I probably scored low on the test since people generally don't "frequently tell me" much about myself.

Also, if people think you may be enraged or offended (due to the nature of your personality), they probably won't say anything at all.

I guess my point is to assess your personality by what you do, say or how you act simply by the verbal reactions of those that you interact with may be rather inaccurate.

Not sure how to get around this though as identifying reactions from those around us (without abruptly being told verbally) can be difficult (if not impossible) for many of us since we don't pick up on social cues well. When taking the test, I guess one could bend the rules a bit and replace "Other people frequently tell me that what I’ve said..." with "frequently think about me" but it may not be very accurate either. I don't like being critical without a logical solution but not sure how to get around this one since this is just an internet self-test anyways.

With that being said, I am thankful for the tests anyways- it helped open my eyes to some of my shortcomings that I thought were completely 'normal'!

Agree with many of the observations made. It is impossible or highly inaccurate for us to rate our own performance in many social situations simply because we cannot do so objectively - we don't know what exactly is normal.

Out of curiosity I did the RDOS test twice (when I joined WP) once as I am now aged 50 and once as I would have answered it thirty years ago. The results were significantly different. The principle reason being that I have learned many social skills now and am more confident as a person.

I have had the same kind of experience with the MMPI -- 1977 & 1997 -- and then the different psychologist giving me that second test did not even want to talk with me about it!

Excellent observations. It's possible, though sad, that the fascination with number related fixations has to do with the only well known example of an autistic person that most of the public would be aware of. I am speaking, of course, of the Rainman movie. It's been my observation that NTs lend more weight to a popular well known example of something than is warranted. Like all people, they form an image of what something like "autism" is from whatever their personal observation is, but they also tend to alter that image based on whatever their assessment of whatever others around them are likely to identify the image with. A powerful well known example like Rainman creates a consensus among wide audiences and eventually a social norm about what something is "supposed" to look like. This can be very difficult to break. NTs do this without realizing or intending to in the same way we aspies can be rude or creepy or otherwise socially awkward without intention or awareness. Normal, uneducated folk do this in plainly obvious ways, even to the point of stating directly (have we not all heard autism described as "OH, like that movie Rainman"). Scientists obviously are not consciously guided by such things, but they have no more control over their unconscious thinking than anyone else, and are affected in more subtle and less obvious ways, like about 5 questions relating to number patterns in an ASD test. I believe this is related to peer pressure and group thinking. NTs seem to, without realizing it, gravitate toward conformity to a set of norms regardless of obvious evidence about the inaccuracy of those norms. This relates to racism, prejudice, religious intolerance, and a number of other problems which I consider to be products of NT thinking. Either way, those on the spectrum will be judged "more autistic" based on their conformity to the norm, however accurately or inaccurately the norm was established.

Personally, I was never interested in number patterns. Had I been so inclined, I might have been able to do similar, but less exaggerated number related feats similar to the movie. I did once memorize a social security number (I worked in a govt. office) in five seconds and recalled it several weeks later to show a co worker how important it was that we not let people see computer screens or files with SSNs on them. I'm personally far more interested by human behavior patterns, social systems like economics and politics, and how underlying flaws in human nature create most of society's problems. I have an innate ability to see how objects and concepts relate to one another, and to understand patterns of causality. I also am highly graphical and visual. I can understand and put most concepts in the form of graphs, charts, diagrams, coordinate plots, shapes, and so on. I can match colors from memory and instantly form images of what an object would look like if placed into another environment (similar to what is seen in "the Da Vinci code" where the main character is able to visualize complex things at will). Until I was in my twenties, I never thought there was anything particularly special about this. Until I discovered AS, and read about theory of mind problems and how aspies tend to assume everyone perceives exactly the same things they do and think in the same way, I simply assumed that people were stupid or willfully ignorant of what was plainly obvious.

I can almost pass as NT now - superficially anyway until people get to know me, I just seem a bit eccentric and introvert. Thirty years ago I was very different. However, tellingly, I did one of those EQ tests a few months ago that are more objective in their evaluation and required less subjective evaluation and it said that basically I've got the EQ of a cabbage a very low score. Can't remember a link to the test now but it is one that requires you to look at photographs of people in situations and tick the relevant box saying what you think is happening. Subjectively I would have rated myself much higher, but apparently my EQ really is that low. I'm blind in social situations and never realised just how bad it really was compared to everyone else! A semi-blind person cannot evaluate how blind they are in relation to "normal" people, there is nothing to compare against.