Do you think I have Aspergers?

Post Reply New Topic

So I was reading about Bill Gates the other day and how its suspected he has aspergers. I looked up aspergers and found that I have a few things like that myself so I took the online AQ test and scored 30. Apparently only 5% of neuotypical people score that high. I then took a much longer 150 question test which said:

Your Aspie score: 90 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 108 of 200
You seem to have both Aspie and neurotypical traits

I am heavily introverted. I would rather go to a bookstore than a party. I have no friends and am basically a loner. I work alone from home for a technology company in Silicon Valley. I think with logic and don't have much emotion or empathy. It's very hard to relate to women for me as they seem to think in terms of emotion. I have very intense interests but its not in a narrow subject but spread across the realm of technology, business, health and politics. I like numbers and love to create spreadsheets where I will gather and categorize data about different things. I do tend to have somewhat one sided conversations when talking about things I like. I have extreme amounts of anxiety, OCD, phobias etc and am annoyed by little noises sometimes. I also have above average intelligence and spend hours each day researching things.

That said, I saw a video on the internet of a guy with aspergers talking and he was monotone and robotic. I am a good speaker and don't have that issue. If I am talking with someone they would definitley not say I was "off" or different in anyway. I don't have strict routines or repetitive mannerisms and don't have an issue with being clumsy or cordination. Up until age 14, I had alot of friends, and almost every girl who came into my orbit and lived near me had a crush on me. I played alot of sports and had a good childhood mostly playing and socializing with other kids.


Honestly I was a little skeptical about this because I can't help but notice the overlap with being introverted and these tests. I think something like 40% of people are intorverted and even higher in Europe and Asia than NA whereas Aspergers is a very rare disorder of something like 1 in 300. I can't help but notice that many of the chief characteristics of aspergers such as social issues are things that are vauge and could apply to lots of people. I don't doubt Aspergers is real but I can't help but wonder if the internet has allowed alot of people such as myself to become virtual hypocondriachs. That said, if I did have Aspergers it would explain a lot.

Last edited by SiliconValley on 08 Dec 2009, 12:07 pm, edited 2 times in total.

You are probably closer to someone with Non-Verbal Learning Disorder than Aspergers. Either way, good luck.

The symptoms fit most people. However, one must have the required amount of symptoms present in each category, and they have to cause significant impairment.

I scored a 184 last time I took the Aspie test, though I don't find it terribly logical.

autism is a variation of the human brain, everyone to some degree has autistic traits. The key is just how many of those traits you have and to what variation. You see, the labels arent all as set in stone as alot of people perceive them to be. Lots of people could be labeled AS but then later receive a label of HFA from another doctor or perhaps just PDD-NOS from another, while at the same time its entirely possible for people not to see a difference in them or that difference not being immediately apparent.

To be in between on the scale to any variation is not all that uncommon, and there will always be people anywhere on that scale.

In a nutshell, at least as far as I see it, theres nothing inherently bad about autistic traits. Now, armed with the above information ask yourself your initial question again, and you start to see its a little difficult to define exactly where AS is on the scale, you just have to ask yourself to what degree the traits affect you and how important is the answer to that question for you. I hope this clears some things up for you.

Keep in mind diagnosed people sometimes do score what you did on that test, the test isnt perfect and can never diagnose. It's greatest flaw is it relies on how the person taking the test views themselves.

The shorter test was probably a Baron-Cohen "screening tool". As it specifies, a percentage of non-Autistic people will score 30, and in fact that percentage is higher than the percentage of the population that actually has AS. It's a screening tool only. The longer test is the rdos, and according to its author is about detecting traits rather than detecting AS; from memory rdos does not believe AS is a disability or disorder, but in fact the expression of some kind of retro-genetics that got into the gene pool when the main anatomically modern human line and the Neanderthalic line (of hominid) cross-bred.

Which indicates that you could expect a high "AS" score on either the Baron-Cohen systemizing or the Baron-Cohen empathy test, and probably the rdos too. To iterate, the Baron-Cohen tests are screening tools, they capture most people with AS above a certain score; a valid use of such tools would be for a mental health agency to use them to screen new consumers admitted so that those with sufficiently high scores can be identified for actual assessment. They are by no means assessments in and of themselves; as the tests themselves indicate the percentage of the population who do not have AS and yet will indicate a need for further assessment (in a mental health context for instance) exceeds the percentage of the overall population that has AS. The tests need to exercise some caution in favouring false positives because given they are intended for self-administration, fidelity is limited and the purpose is to indicate who needs further assessment. It would not make sense then to favour false negatives.

For a diagnosis of AS, it is necessary that one meet the threshold for individual characteristics, and suffer clinically significant impairment or distress as a result. If your anxiety or other causes of distress or impairment can be linked to present traits of AS then they would be considered in the course of assessment, however, many people who are intelligent and introverted will experience anxiety. If you are reasonably intelligent and think hard enough there is a very good chance you will find something to be anxious about.

As for intelligence, it is not an indicator of AS. Intelligence below the cut off for "normal or better" intelligence is a contra indicator (the DSM for instance includes two exclusion criteria that are intended to vet out people who would not score in the normal or higher range on standardized IQ tests.

Many adults with AS do not, and in fact many children with AS do not either. However, I suspect it is very rare for someone with AS to be "normal" in tone and prosody at least during childhood. This is something best judged by people who knew you well as a child if you have AS since it is not necessarily something people with AS realize themselves. If people who knew you well when you were a child failed to notice anything atypical about your prosody or your communication generally, then it is not all that likely that you have AS.
If this is an accurate observation on your part, then it is not particularly likely you have AS. I would esteem myself as achieving quite highly in this area for someone with AS because I can in particular contexts "appear normal", but I cannot do so pervasively and even in contexts where I am usually able to do quite well, my performance is easily derailed by minor things such as being tired, too much noise, too much visual clutter, deviation from expectations for which I do not have a prepared "script" etc.

The motor coordination is not particularly indicative; that one has motor coordination issues is more of a very mild indicator than the absence is a counter indicator. This is because research indicates that motor coordination issues occur at a rate of about 50% among those with AS (according to research conducted by Tony Attwood's Heart and Minds clinics), and at a much lower rate than that in the general population.

A lack of strict routines or repetitive mannerisms are not all that likely in someone who has AS, although as with prosody, this is something those with AS might not recognize in themselves (particularly the routines).

It is very unlikely that you would have had lots of friends if you have AS. AS results not only in differences that might be overtly annoying to age peers, but also in a number of characteristics that are actually kind of creepy to others on some level (I construe this is a kind of "uncanny valley" effect).

The prevelance of ASDs (including Kanner and PDD-NOS type Autism) is I understand at around 1%, so clearly the criteria for AS do not capture a particularly large percentage of people who are introverted and this would be the case even if a proportion of people with AS were not in fact extroverted. This highlights why these tests you took are screening tools only. They are intended to be answered by lay-people and so their fidelity is somewhat limited. The proportion of people who do not have AS but would score in the AS range on the tests is higher than the proportion of the total population who have AS. They are just screening tools.


The particular social competency issues that apply to people with AS are actually not particularly vague.


I certainly cannot tell you whether you have AS, but based on what you describe, it's not particularly likely so far as I can see. What do you think that your having AS would explain?

Insufficient data coupled with lack of trainuing as a diognition