Help needed by diagnosed Autistics

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I'm in the process of checking Simon Baron-Cohens EQ-test, which I find quite suspect. The most suspect thing is that it is called the "empathy" quotient, when most of it is clearly not about empathy but mind-reading abilities. There are a few real, empathy questions in the test, but I suspect these to be irrelevant for ASCs. The EQ test is part of the AAA battery used to diagnose people, and thus the stereotypes in the EQ.test about how Autistics are need to be disproved.

What I need is a better, diagnosed reference population, as too many in the diagnosed group that today do Aspie-quiz seems to be in denial about their diagnosis, and often seem to be correct in this suspicion.

After a received enough answers, I will write a new blog-entry about the properties of the EQ-test, including:
1. Questions with no relevance for ASCs
2. Which of Aspie-quiz and the EQ test is most reliable for AS/HFA diagnosis.
3. Document how some key questions about empathy in the EQ test relate to Aspie-quiz and how they group to prove that Autistics do not lack empathy.

Link to Aspie-quiz (with the embedded EQ test): http://www.rdos.net/eng/Aspie-quiz.php

The "mind reading" abilities you're talking about are indicative of empathy, from a psychological standpoint. Have you done a literature review on the subject as of yet? I'd certainly be interested in seeing what the tide of scholarly opinion has to say about the EQ.

Having a psychology background from grad school, I have to say that I don't see the problem with the EQ being used as a measure of empathy. It has both face and construct validity and has undergone norming, proper clinical testing (unlike the Aspie-quiz), etc. This isn't to say that the EQ is perfect, but I don't think you're going about debunking the EQ in the correct way.

Are you saying that people who indicate a professional diagnosis aren't getting then "You're likely an aspie" result on your test? If that's the case, have you looked at possible issues with norming, phrasing, funneling, and other parts of questionnaire design?

The diagnosed group has deteriorated over a few years time, while the self-diagnosed group still has similar ratios of "very likely Aspie". It cannot be the case that Aspie-quiz has lost its diagnostic powers, because the AQ-test does even worse on the diagnosed group, and correlation between AQ scores and Aspie-quiz score difference is still the same (0.83).

And in relation to empathy, I believe we should call things by their proper names. If ASCs have problems with mind-reading NTs, this cannot be called for "lacking empathy", especially not since I bet they have few problems with mind-reading others on the spectrum, and probably also have intact empathy in relation to Autistics and in relation to animals.

I look forward to your discoveries in this area. What you assumed is what my intuition was telling me I should find here before I joined the list, but I haven't found anyone posting about such abilities. Most folks seem invested in their problems not understanding NTs, but not much is spoken about relating to each other or animals.

I'm afraid I cannot help you though. I am neither diagnosed, nor does your test call me either "Likely an Aspie" or "Likely Neurotypical" save once, but most other online tests that folks here recommend, call me solidly NT, or slightly above the average AS score of a NT woman.

Last edited by willmark on 31 Aug 2009, 12:20 pm, edited 3 times in total.

I don't think the EQ is necessarily inaccurate in assessing empathy in a statistical manner. It just doesn't work well for specific individuals because it's actually testing a wide variety of traits. These traits might be statistically correlated to each other when you have a large control population but when you look at individual answers to questions you'll probably find that some score very high in one area of "empathy" while scoring very low in another area. Indeed, simply having an introverted personality knocks down my score in the EQ test. I don't believe that not having as much interest in being social as an extrovert necessarily makes me less empathetic.

This test seems to assess empathy from both the "can I tell what's going on" and the "do I care" perspectives. I would consider myself to be highly empathetic from the perspective of "do I care", but not that good at detecting what others are feeling/thinking.

Come to think of it, I did read a thread on this. As far as recognizing other Aspies when they encounter them, it's a cognitive process there too. When I encounter another empath, I feel it in the person without needing to ask them, or ask questions to validate my hypothesis. Aspies or the posts of Aspies that I have read, don't seem to experience an ability to perceive other Aspies, other than via a cognitive process.

I'm not sure what empathy exactly means, even after looking it up I have two different ideas:
1.Being able to read feelings LIKE reading minds, like in Star Trek NG Deanna L'Trois was able to read feelings of people she couldn't see, and know if they were hostile or in distress, and that was presented as super powers. In real situations it means understanding body language and emotions and getting hints from people who don't say everything they mean, which is often missing among us, but on WP that problem is helped by the fact that we can't see each other and we can only know and express our feelings with words anyway.

2.Being able to recognize that other people have feelings, and able to feel the same way when they are aware of the other person's feelings. But what I'm talking about in this definition is what most people have if they are NOT Social Psychopaths who never feel anything but seem to hate everyone to death and behave like foaming pit bulls.

I'm not sure what to make of this Aspie test, particularly the EQ part. I have to approach it analytically, and it does seem to be biased toward certain aspects of EQ while ignoring others that I've read about.

I'd like to see such tests somehow distinguish between what I as a diagnosed Aspie have learned to do cognitively and consciously yet others do unconsciously without any "formal" training or practice. The test asks for such metrics as age, but I'm not certain if that is merely for demographic information or used in the calculation of the score at the end.

With age comes experience, and even I (a social dimwit by any measure) have figured out a few things. My neurologists have told me that socially I'm a pre-teen, even though chronologically I'm 40+. But regardless, I have learned certain social routines and can perform them, even though I'm uncomfortable doing so and would much rather not do them. I can't tell how the test addresses these issues, all of which presumably are related to empathy and EQ.

Your bet would be lost in my case. I am as impaired in cognitive empathy in regards to my Autistic relatives as I am in regards to non Autistic people.


We are impaired in empathy because we are impaired in an aspect of empathy, for which apparent potential higher levels of empathy in other areas, do not compensate for sufficiently in terms of the effect on functional performance.

The test you are referring to is intended to aid in distinguishing between those with AS and those without. The whole purpose of it requires that distinguishing differences in empathy between the two groups be the focus of the questions, and areas where differences are less clear (either in fact or understanding) serve no purpose being included.

Research about empathy impairments began with the most obvious (to an outside observer) aspects of empathy. However, there certainly has been research going beyond the more obvious indicators, (in other words research that examines effective/sympathetic empathy as distinct from cognitive empathy, and empathy as a whole). This area does need further research, as does much that relates to ASDs.

The most sensible interpretation of that research (in my opinion) is that those with AS experience impairment in cognitive empathy (what you call “mind reading”), but actually experience higher levels of sympathetic empathy (than non ASD controls).

This is not particularly relevant to the test you refer to in the context of it being used to distinguish between persons with and persons without an ASD, because the most distinct differences to the best of current knowledge in this field, occur in the area of cognitive empathy. Your criticism would be relevant where the results of the test were used to make statements about things not directly entailed in the questions themselves, (for instance in any case where someone interprets results to mean that people with AS care less about others independently of levels of awareness; the results of the EQ tell us nothing whatsoever about that, and your criticisms_are_more_relevant_to this).

Last edited by pandd on 01 Sep 2009, 8:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

What definition of empathy do you want to use?

There's this study that compiles most of the clinical data:

I have what I call "situational-sympathetic empathy". It's my own brand.

I thought the accepted definition of "empathy" was the ability to "put oneself into the shoes" of another person regarding experiences that the empathiser has not themselves experienced, so I'm not really surprised that a lot of the EQ questions were about being able to "see" the emotions of other people.

The problem as I see it is that a lot of ordinary people tend to think of empathy as more or less synonymous with compassion or caring. So a psychologist might use a "low-empathy" label without realising its potential to stigmatise. I'd see it as a step forward if they would abandon the use of the word "empathy" and just call it something like "social awareness."

If the EQ test also has questions about compassion, then it would appear to be meshing two very different concepts, which seems dangerous, as it further blurs the distinction between them. On the other hand, if Aspies constantly have difficulty in reading the emotions of others, they might well get to the point of being "past caring," in the same way as many Aspies eventually lose their motivation to socialise because of poor results.......so it might make sense in a diagnostic questionnaire to have questions about dulled compassion, if indeed that is a feature of autism.

Nonetheless, I'm sure that compassion is very much alive in many autistic people, in fact I suspect that it can become inappropriately intense: if you can't read another person's feelings, you might overestimate them rather than underestimating or ignoring them. I've experienced that problem myself, and have seen evidence of it in others.

doh, took the test, but can't download pdf files-something is wrong with my adobe, lol. Ah well.

Psychopathy and autism do not share traits, they are virtually opposites and mutually exclusive. The psychopath has excellent social abilities, and excellent ability to express and understand nonverbal communication of NTs. He/she is so good at this that he/she can easily manipulate others. This is combined with REAL low empathy. Autistics, OTOH, are natural empaths, but cannot easily understand others feelings.

Right, and that's what the bolded portion of Daniel's quote says. Well, except for the natural empath bit. I still think that you're relying on a common definition of empathy rather than relying on the one used in psychology. Not being able to empathize is not the same as not being able to experience compassion.