I read a post at Matthew’s blog today describing his current feelings towards his own motivation in which he said:
I think a lot of ‘creative’ types would agree that it is very easy to self-diagnose with borderline manic depression, OCD, Aspergers, and a variety of other personality traits that go with the territory of trying to create something that other people will appreciate…
Now obviously with my daughter being classicaly autistic and Aspergers being a companion to Kanners autism (they are both autistic spectrum disorders – ASD’s) my interest was immediately piqued.
I commented that I had noted that a _lot_ of my fellow designers seemed, from reading their comments or blog postings, to have definite ASD characteristics – most notably of Aspergers Syndrome – but I then chickened out and refused to name names.
It seemed only fair though to offer my fellow designers a chance to find out for themselves whether they display a disposition towards autism and to that end I’ll point you to the online ‘AQ’ (autistic quotient) test.
Unlike a lot of online tests, this one won’t tell you what sort of Star Wars character you are or what your Hobbit name is. This one measures your responses to key questions that determine whether or not you have a disposition towards autism. Its developed by a team at Cambridge University led by Professor Simon Baron-Cohen (if you recognise that name then yes, they are related – its his cousin).
If you score 32 or higher then you have an increased chance of having a disposition towards autism. Its nothing to worry unduly about – if you’ve coped fine up till now then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t continue to do so but if you do struggle and you get this score or more then maybe you should see your Doctor.
I’m also happy to tell you more about autism and point you to some great resources if you need it. Add a comment or email me privately if you’d rather.
NB: The CGI script thats processing the results seems to be broken – manual scoring is at the bottom of the test.
Left Brain Right Brain 
As far as I can tell I scored one point…. what lives over on that extreme then?
LOL! I dread to think!
22 (after fiddling with Notepad for five minutes because their scoring button is broken) – not too far away from the mean. Do I get a bonus point for looking for patterns in the scoring? 😉
LOL @ John ‘Ferris Bueller’ Oxton…
Well, I scored 23, I think, so a bit higher than average, but nothing to worry about I’d guess. Generally, I’d reckon my periodic lack of motivation is down to a current lack of exercise and well-being. :S
About 3 years ago I took the AQ test and scored around 36 points. Then I took it several times more and kept scoring high. I realized that I needed to check this out some more. If it hadn’t been for that darn test, I would have never opened up this can of worms. If only they would have recognized autism when I was going on four and still not talking….. but that was some forty years ago. Rather, the “experts” said I had “emotional problems”. Now I realize that I will never be able to break out of the isolation from other people, but at least I know there is a name for people like me.
I think for a lot of autistics of a certain age or older that your story is very common Dave – diagnosis seemed pretty bad in those days!
In those days the original “autistic psycopathy” (aspergers) had not yet been diagnised in the western world. It is not till 1994 that it was added to the dx’s in the western world.
As for me I keep scoring high in these (no suprise really)
Wow… I scored 39. Never even thought I had any disposition towards autism.
I found it really hard to do this test honestly. Every parent looks for a “why?”, and I’ve pretty much settled on the genetic so this test supports my feelings if I score high – I scored 34 days after being told my daughter was probably autistic (current diagnosis is PDD-NOS). It’s not just the mercury crowd who have trouble seeing things objectively, I have no idea how indicative the score I got was.
BTW Kevin this has got to be the first time I’ve ever seen someone refer to this test without saying what they scored.
Good point Andrew. I always get the impression when doing these kind of things that if you have even a little bit of knowledge you can steer yourself away unconsiously from the answers that would lead you to score high.
You’re also right I didn’t reveal my own score – in an effort to remain purely objective ;o).
I get 36.
Joe – you may not have. Its definitely not a diagnostic tool this. If you’re having problems related to the areas you scored highly in then it may be worth a trip to the Docs but if you’re not having any problems at all – don’t worry about it :o)
@Helen: “autisitc psycopathy”. Charming! I guess its slightly better than Landon Down’s ‘Idiot Savant’ but only just!
I’m also an autistic (aspie) web designer/developer, and I love the way you merge those things on this site! I am always curious about resources and information about autism and would be interested to hear whatever you have to share. Thanks 🙂 And where DO you find out what your hobbit name is?
@Lori: Ha! The Hobbit name thing was a couple of years ago – its probably a long dead site now :o)
In terms of resources – and as you are an aspie yourself – you might find “Aspies For Freedom”:http://www.aspiesforfreedom.com/phpBB2/index.php a good place. Its got a busy forum (I’m a regular there myself) and loads of quality links centering around research and advocacy.
I’ve just done the test and scored 20 but I’m going back to do it again as I’m sure it should be much higher than that.
Really Graham? I was surprised to get as high as I did.
Kev, I’m not overly worried it’s just I sometimes see things the wrong way round as it were, here’s a great example. When you took over on John’s guest blogger slot, I read the section heading “The last few posts made by this month’s guest blogger.” and took “last” as being not many left. Heck, I even e mailed him to let him know he’d left it up from Nathan’s stint, which was a bit embarrassing.