Have you ever tried to take the AQ test as an earlier self?

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I've been scoring between 39 and 42 ever since the first time I took it, a few years back. The first couple times I just dismissed it out of hand, "haha! ridiculous" . . . then I came across WP, maybe a year ago, and read one of those threads, "You know you have AS/D when. . . " and identified with so much of what people were writing there.

A few times I've seen people saying that they would have gotten a higher/more Aspie score as a child than they do now, had they been tested, because they have become more adapted to the earthly life over time. That makes sense to me.

Oppositely, my AS-style behaviors have increased over the past few years (in my late 40s-early 50s). Granted it is probably related to one or more neurology-altering events in the same time period. (I'm not trying to be annoyingly mysterious so much, but I also don't like to be very specific, for stalker reasons. . . ) Anyway, let's say frontal lobe issues and leave it at that.

To make a LSS, I decided to take this version

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aqtest.html

Answering the questions about myself as a teenager I got 31.

Answering as I think I would have answered if I took the test as that same teenager, and I got only an 8.

Where does everyone get all their self-awareness? I was so oblivious to myself in those days! Does that come from having a diagnosis, particularly an early diagnosis? When I took the test as "teenage myself" I answered a lot of the social questions based on wishful thinking, and what I thought was adaptation. I thought I would enjoy having a full social life & hanging out with other people all the time, but I hadn't really done much of it yet.... Unless I had a boyfriend, it was rare for me to be included in what other people were doing. I think I had no idea that other people were actually getting together all the time. Or some mistaken idea about why I wasn't invited [often later disproved].

I didn't really know I was awkward.... I knew I wasn't good at sports. Other than that, I thought I was pretty smooth, but, I've never been smooth..... Do people really other than parents actually tell you you're rude, or that you go on and on about something? Or do they just drift away and not hang out with you anymore, or ever to begin with? In retrospect (even sometimes figured it out at the time) I did it a lot, but people were usually too polite to call me on it?

Also, I was unaware that my social skills were lacking. I had all the written stuff down pat, the etiquette books. . . my great aunts were debutantes in NYC when they were younger, and made sure I had perfect manners. As far as I knew, that's all there was to it? I didn't know enough about the subtle social code to know I was missing it. On some level, I knew I was different. . . I never put all the different ways I was different together, until I read this website. I don't think I connected any one incident with any other incident?

Definitely, I was less affected as a teenager than I am now but, as I said before, this could be / probably is due to other neurological issues with the same symptoms as AS. I already knew that, and was also beginning to realize how oblivious I've always been to all that connecting with others stuff. So it's interesting for me to see these results from that perspective.

Also that particular test misses a couple of factors that are part of why I think I have AS. Like teaching myself to read at the age of two, being made fun of in school & bullied, being a stalker (I didn't know that's what I was doing, though, & stopped before I realized it), um, having stalkers, constantly being taken advantage of, being obsessed with things or people, etc. etc.

Or at least, I don't see it addressing any of those factors. In any case, it is what it is.

I have spent quite a bit of time rewriting class schedules I think would have been better moves to take as a teenager!

I was clunky. I thought if I did something, someone would respond in a certain way. Well, it's heavily dependent on situation, on what mood the person is in.

Around 2000, when I was in my mid-thirties, I decided reciprocity was the main social skill.

Now, I think there are a number of skills, being open to appreciating other people, being nonjudgmental, being in favor of people. And it's about ping-ponging it back and forth in a series of medium steps.

I took the Myers-Briggs about two and a half years ago. I think I scored as an INTJ (kind of an idealist and a dreamer)

I think there was an accompanying part about jobs. I took it in an optimistic frame of mind. So, I took the thing medium serious. One question, how much do they know about the world to connects skills, interest, dispositions to specific jobs?