AQ Test, anyone?

[Maguspk]

peniscopter in the bathroom.

I thought I was the only one who did this!

You are correct that social awkwardness is not necessarily a factor, in-fact it's possible to have autism that strengthens social aspects of your brain, or language centers(*cough...cough*).

Out of curiosity did you mean your autism is related to the language center of your brain? I'm interested, do you learn languages more easily, have a better understanding of language in general, writing? I'm actually intrigued so if you could elaborate more on it that'd be cool, it seems really neat.

[Kryssan]

Score: 23. I guess that makes me a lightweight.

[Jer]

35. Meh.

[Soa]

I got a 17.

This is odd because I am fairly anti-social person who is good with numbers, and I even answered most of the questions that way. The test wasn't even very good, too many of the questions were vague and I couldn't give "definite" answers to most of them.

[Sylvrdragon]

When I first stumbled upon the Aspy checklist on the Wiki, I remember getting to the end and saying "Holy shit, I probably have this." Directly after that, I realized that I don't give a shit.

I love video games and reading, but I also love a stimulating conversation or debate. I love explaining things to people, but often despair that I can't express it to the point where they will understand it the same way that I do. I especially love learning. There is nothing better than the moment you understand something well enough to apply it to the real world, or enough to connect it to things you already know like a game of "Connect the dots".

I find that most people annoy me. I used to just say that I hate stupid people, but I have since narrowed it down to a few specific traits. People who speak in absolutes- There is no greater show of ignorance than not recognizing your own ignorance! People who let their emotions control them- Watching someone make their (or my) situation worse do to anger or grief or pride makes me wanna snap. People who give too much weight to social status- namely people who will lie, cheat or fight if you make them look bad. The last also applies to people who spend their entire lives trying to 'fit in'.

To address Max's stance on religion, the reluctance to claim straight up Atheism is a result of a scientific mind. The term Atheist implies that you believe there is 0% probability of there being a god (or any deity), and frankly, it's impossible to assign 0% probability to ANYTHING. As such, if you claim to be Atheist, you are basically claiming to be ignorant. If you admit to ANY probability of a god (as a good scientist, and especially mathematician, MUST do), then you cannot claim to be an Atheist. You are forever stuck in the Agnostic category.

[Darus Grey]

I thought I was the only one who did this!


Out of curiosity did you mean your autism is related to the language center of your brain? I'm interested, do you learn languages more easily, have a better understanding of language in general, writing? I'm actually intrigued so if you could elaborate more on it that'd be cool, it seems really neat.

Yes, my autism is in my language center, I learned to speak...very abnormally early and was reading at a college level before I was 10(I also read very fast...10ppm with active effort). I don't really "learn" languages easier, since language center is a misnomer in that there's actually a dozen or so distinct parts of your brain that process language; so some parts are abnormally strong and the others normal or worse(example: I'm absolutely horrid at transcribing IPA I simply can't hear the difference between many vowels, but am hyper-sensitive to syntactic intonation...both in speech and text; i.e. I get a lot more meaning out of people's words than they intended, and am hyper-sensitive to things like lying).

Fun!

[Byrthnoth]

AQ score of 19 for me.

There are two ways to look at Autism right now:
1) Because there are no legitimate and specially designed treatment for the different forms of autism, it's simplest to lump them into one category for treatment purposes.
2) Because we lump all autists into one category, it becomes very difficult to distinguish different types of autism and determine their cause.

They've sort of compromised and started calling Autism a "spectrum disorder". In truth, autists probably suffer from developmental disorders where some combination of environment and genetics comes together unfavorably and causes a problem somewhere in the body that ultimately causes a problem in the central nervous system. If you can see how vague I'm being you can understand why people haven't separated autists out more accurately than via methods like these survey tests.

If it makes sense, Autism is a phenotype and not a specific disease. They're making a survey to attempt to find people expressing the autism phenotype. However, as long as they treat autism as a disease they probably won't make much ground with it because it probably doesn't have one uniform cause.

[Minions]

Agree: 2,5,6,9,12,16,18,19,23,41,43,46: 1 point
Disagree: 1,11,25,30: 1 point
Score: 16

So I'm average.... hm.

[Warudo Ecksu]

If it makes sense, Autism is a phenotype and not a specific disease. They're making a survey to attempt to find people expressing the autism phenotype. However, as long as they treat autism as a disease they probably won't make much ground with it because it probably doesn't have one uniform cause.

Doctors don't treat it as a disease (Disease implies something viral or bacterial, or an infection. Conditions classified under autism are "disorders"), and there is no treatment. These days when children are diagnosed with some form of autism, they start receiving speech and behavioral therapy right away. The most they (people like me) can do is teach the child and parent how to cope and go about normal activities, depending on the severity of the child. (The ones I get are always severe.)

There's a lot of interesting studies out there that suggest vaccinations are one cause of autism. Kids these days receive I think 36? vaccines by age 5, and when I was a kid it was .. 10 or less vaccines by age 5. With this in mind, the autism rate in children has increased 300% in the past 20 years. A lot of the symptoms of autism are the exact same as mercury poisoning. (You can google that if you really are interested.)

I aided a child once who had mercury poisoning from a vaccine he received right after birth. He behaved exactly like a high functioning non-verbal autistic child. Keep this is mind when you feel like having babies.

In the case of Aspergers syndrome, this one obviously isn't caused by vaccinations. It seems like it might be more genetic. Remember the kid I mentioned earlier, his dad also has aspergers. If you think you have aspergers, you should get tested before you start having kids.

[Shiroikage]

This is getting away from the topic of discussion but thiomersal (source of mercury in vaccines in question) is not responsible for autism.

[alt]

10

[archibaldcrane]

With this in mind, the autism rate in children has increased 300% in the past 20 years.

Lol.

You mean this disorder, which continues to be mis-diagnosed today, has proper statistical data for its prevalence in 1989 for a "increased 300%" label to have any meaning whatsoever?

Right.

[Darus Grey]

With this in mind, the autism rate in children has increased 300% in the past 20 years.

The key question to ask is...when did we start looking for autism in most children?...about 20 years ago, it was simply massively undiagnosed for the longest time.

Though I certainly wouldn't be surprised if it was a naturally selected breeding trait...in functional autistics the gain generally outweighs the loss.

[Kaylia]

Hmm.... correlation between high intelligence and probability of aspergers next?

This


[edit]

6 pages late gdi. I didnt realize this thread had so many post

[Tristam]

There's a lot of interesting studies out there that suggest vaccinations are one cause of autism. Kids these days receive I think 36? vaccines by age 5, and when I was a kid it was .. 10 or less vaccines by age 5. With this in mind, the autism rate in children has increased 300% in the past 20 years. A lot of the symptoms of autism are the exact same as mercury poisoning. (You can google that if you really are interested.)

I aided a child once who had mercury poisoning from a vaccine he received right after birth. He behaved exactly like a high functioning non-verbal autistic child. Keep this is mind when you feel like having babies.

There are actually zero studies that suggest this, don't ever give advice to people having kids. Mercury poisoning? There isn't possibly enough mercury in any vaccine to poison someone.

[archibaldcrane]

Darus Grey really wants to fellate the idea of autistics as geniuses from whom society greatly benefits.

No dude, just no.

Also, you are comically mis-using the idea of natural selection - being autistic (high functioning, genius, or poop-flinger) doesn't increase your chances of procreating.

[Max™]

are people not differentiating between autism and autistic savants in this thread? lol?

having autism doesn't make you smarter than other people in some ways. It simply means you have a deficiency of development or coping in a specific category.

Yup, this is what I'm saying.

autistic savants show an extraordinary aptitude for an ability or skill, like math or visual memory (rain man).

I don't have a savant aptitude, I learn the good old fashioned way, reading, studying, thinking, explaining, etc. I know that isn't what Asperger's is, I'm not saying I have it for the reasons you're implying. I'm saying I have it because if I don't, I have something which makes me just like your typical Aspy in most ways. Not the bullshit "zomg I'm special and I'm rainman" ways.

The lame as shit ones too, the unbelievable difficulty with empathy, the odd speech issues, the inability to understand what are apparently obvious social cues. The stim movements that you have to either channel, or deal with, because holding them back actually hurts. The issues with digestion, sleeping, being touched unexpectedly.

Is being tickled torturous to you too? Worst fucking shit ever, it isn't funny, it isn't making me laugh, it makes me want to get the fuck away from you. That's an old OLD memory there, like toddler memory, always fucking despised people who tickled me. Hated people who picked me up and held me up near the roof too, couldn't understand why they were doing this to me, but I did my damndest to get away.


Did you have to train yourself to endure eye contact? Did you have to learn how to handle people, not in some odd situation like a fight, or just out in public. Dealing with people at all, you know how to do that?

I don't, I flirt because people seem to respond positively to it, and I control situations by placing them on my terms, or I leave.


Is the idea of working somewhere that require you to deal with customers in a specific, and polite, manner almost painful?

I'm not just socially awkward or inexperienced about how to deal with people.

I'm unable to shake the sense I have that you're all completely insane. You say things you don't mean, you imply things without saying them, you discuss shit that just comes to mind, having no specific focus or reason in your conversations half the time it seems. You don't respect personal space, talk on cellphones in public, and randomly bump into other people.

This test was basically either: are you awkward as fuck around people? or do you have a weird fascination with certain things / need to maintain a rigid schedule?

The test also isn't a diagnosis, it's at best a tool to make those who may need diagnosis stand out a bit more, so you can narrow the group down from say, all of BG. To those who scored in a certain range.

Then you can check those people for other traits to see if further diagnosis is worthwhile. As you saw there were lots of people who scored in a certain range, and stated while they had some of the traits to one degree or another, far less stated they had all the traits, to extreme degrees.

I appear as awkward to you as you appear to me, I have different ways of signaling information, I have a different sort of definition of hobbies. They aren't just things I'm interested in, they're things that I can't keep out of my head, always burbling away at me, reminding me how much better everything feels when I'm studying a set of equations, discussing the merits of a physical model and it's extrapolations, studying cars, driving, etc.

That list you just made max, 3 of those things are exactly me. Incidentally, I scored a 20 on this test because they are asking completely separate things. You don't have to be socially awkward or need to stick to a schedule if you feel any/all of those things - there are levels of autism. I was actually diagnosed with autism when I was 3.5 years old because I was showing no development of motor skills like listening or talking (I had not said a word). A month or so later, everything started and developed normally after that - if not at a more rapid pace as to make up for the lack of previous development.

The test is not a diagnosis, just a way to point out those who may need to consider it, and to help determine the general level which diagnosed officials are affected.

36 is right smack in the middle for Aspy's, incidentally, not that it proves anything.

When everything is pointing towards it, and no other option though?

tl;dr stop thinking autism = social retardation + strong intelligence

Did I say that?

It isn't social retardation, it is inability to recognize and process certain information types. Think about all of the subconcious cues you use in conversation, the more aware ones, the way you move your face, how your head is pointed, what you're looking at. What you're doing with your hands, which way your body is facing, etc.


When someone else displays these signals to you, do you have an idea what they mean?

I barely even notice body language and facial signals, and I have no fucking idea what they mean. I can't read your meaning there, the social development part of my brain there never kicked on I guess.

If I'm not in my preferred field of interest, the zomgwtfphysics guy is often an uneducated dweeb. Ask me about 19th century literature sometime, that'll be a hoot.


Regarding the poop, no... I don't even like having to shit, I don't like food because I know that shit used to be food, and it's hard to get over that. So no, no poop games, but that isn't a universal thing, more often found in lower functioning cases last I checked.

[archibaldcrane]

Max, repeat after me:

I might have aspergers, I seem to have some of the symptoms, but I'm not sure, and I haven't been diagnosed with it because I don't have health insurance.

I know you claim to be bad at understanding how normal people think, and let me help you by saying that your self-diagnosed stance on aspergers is fucking annoying. You might not think it's annoying, but normal guy over here is letting you know that it is.

[Warudo Ecksu]

This is getting away from the topic of discussion but thiomersal (source of mercury in vaccines in question) is not responsible for autism.

http://www.generationrescue.org/

These people will disagree with you. Jenny McCarthy, mother of an autistic child, strongly believes one size (referring to vaccines) does not fit all for children, and a lot of mothers believe this as well. Vaccinations causing autism is a highly controversial topic with those involved in the field. Doctors will say a child has autism, and if he ever seems to function normally later in life, they'll claim he was misdiagnosed. It's a really, really touchy subject.

There are actually zero studies that suggest this, don't ever give advice to people having kids. Mercury poisoning? There isn't possibly enough mercury in any vaccine to poison someone.

Dude, you need to do some research before you try to tell a person they're wrong. I work with children who HAVE mercury poisoning from vaccinations aside from children with autism. I see them every day. I read books. I watch interviews. I work with these kids' doctors and therapists.

Yes, there are studies.

http://www.know-vaccines.org/autism.html

We should get back on topic of aspergers and spongebob.

[Max™]

The key question to ask is...when did we start looking for autism in most children?...about 20 years ago, it was simply massively undiagnosed for the longest time.

Though I certainly wouldn't be surprised if it was a naturally selected breeding trait...in functional autistics the gain generally outweighs the loss.

No, autistics generally don't share the same urge to breed as most people do.

It isn't like we're a bunch of fucking rainman supergeniuses, at best some of us are more in the middle, functional in many ways, and occasionally having drives to focus on specific subjects to the point of appearing brilliant in general.

It's just a different spread of interests. I have a handful of things I really enjoy doing, and only a couple I specifically focus my efforts into. Outside of that, I'm at best average at other subjects, or well behind compared to a typical person.

We're not a step in evolution, we're not superior or some silly shit like that, we're just wired differently.