I come in at 22 on the Wired test.
I have a weird story about me and living with people-- I've never heard of anything else like it, but this crowd is as likely a place as any to see if someone else has experienced or heard of something similar.
Up into adulthood, I was moderately bad at social interaction, and also not interested in "that boring people stuff". When Asperger's came on the public radar, I wondered if I had it (I'm 57-- if I'd been born later, there might have been an effort at diagnosis and treatment, but as it was, I was simply the sort of person who deserved to be bullied), but the emotional tone for people with Asperger's seemed to be that they tried to be social, couldn't make it work, and were sad about it. I was angry, and I hadn't tried especially hard, either. I was inclined to think I had a combination of being naturally somewhat socially inept and having grown up in an emotionally abusive family.
Anyway, sometime in my 30s (I don't have the autistic thing about dates), I was at an Alexander Technique workshop led by Tommy Thompson who has a background in meditation, and he had the class pair off and pay attention to each other for what was probably ...
I can actually enjoy (reasonably intelligent) mundane conversation for an hour or two at a time, though I do start to get lack-of-abstraction claustrophobia after a while. I'm going to see if there's some way to get people out of the highly concrete chitchat vortex.
I love the terms "lack-of-abstraction claustrophobia" and "highly concrete chitchat vortex." You have a way with words.
In my experience conversations may start with mundane subject matter, but with interesting and intelligent people, they dive off into abstraction and more interesting topics. For instance, what people do usually comes up early on, like with the pacifist lawyer, and that gives you a chance to talk about more interesting things. I tend to like asking probing questions early on, or casually throwing out some of my interests, and seeing what comes up.
Good post. I'm not sure how much advantage one would get out of identifying one's autism, but it's probably good to know either way.
I think the most glaring atypical-for-people-with-Asperger's trait among the Less Wrong and especially SIAI community is the lack of an "all-absorbing narrow interest"; I and many others had such traits as children, but these days a lot of what I see among SIAI Visiting Fellows and my vague impression of folks here on Less Wrong are academic generalists, or even true renaissance man generalists.
I'm not sure if it's atypical that I built up my generalist nature via obsessively practicing skills for 6 months to 2 years at a time and then moving on. I spent a year constantly playing basketball, then 2 solid years on guitar and music theory, then 6 months learning social skills, then 2-month spurts of studying chess, then 6 months devouring the Sequences and cognitive psychology studies, et cetera, until it came to be that I have a solid base for doing whatever it is I may want to do. (Of course, I dropped out of high school in the process, but I feel it was probably worth it.) Do others have similar experiences?
Wait, all of academia is a 'narrow interest' in the eyes of your average person? Does the average person chunk people into two groups, 'those who seem like they read Wikipedia for fun' and 'normal folk'? That's a scary thought. It'd be really cool if someone ahem Michael Vassar ahem wrote a 'The World is Mad' post and followed it up with an analysis of why the world is mad: what you would expect of a world predominately run by IQ 120 people with an average age of 55 or so, elected by a populace who largely categorize the things they see in the world as either good or evil.
Roko, sometime we need to take LWers out on a field trip to talk to normal people in clubs and bars. I think many people here might be surprised at what they find out there in da jungle, baby.
...like people who believe in astrology, people with -1 second long attention spans, constant one-upmanship and power jockeying, people who slap you on the back and call you "bro," obsessions with alcohol and sometimes drugs, fixation on team sports and celebrities, complete moral relativism, talking extremely loudly, and other travesties too horrible to name.
At the same time, I wonder if there are citations available on this subject. If it takes, say, 115+ IQ to have academic interests, then most people are indeed below that threshold.
Your usual club/bar crowd in a major city is probably above average still. You can still have interesting conversations there: probably not AI, physics, serious philosophy or population genetics but pop-psychology, gender, sex, music and film, sure as long as you don't over do it and get too serious.
In comparison, my girlfriend's mother (they are from the rural midwest) thought "Al Qaeda" was the name of the man we had put in charge in Iraq (Al as in Albert or Allen).
Edit: I remember there was an AMA on reddit which was just with some guy who had a lower than average IQ and everyone acted like they were meeting an alien.
In comparison, my girlfriend's mother (they are from the rural midwest) thought "Al Qaeda" was the name of the man we had put in charge in Iraq (Al as in Albert or Allen).
That's just a trivia question. It doesn't say much about her intelligence without additional information like the amount of news she has watched, etc.
I tried for a bit to think of something that would irrevocably demonstrate someone as stupid, but I couldn't think of anything. I think when it comes down to it, the kind of stupidity that matters is the kind that makes you slow at learning new things. So to figure out that someone was irrevocably stupid you'd have to see them work on learning something simple for a while without getting much of anywhere.
There is another important ability associated with intelligence: being able to apply existing knowledge creatively. This is easier to test--if someone "knows" how to program but can't write fizzbuzz, they fail. Or maybe if someone "knows" basic arithmetic but can't explain its misapplication in this story. But I think this creativity ability only arises in people who can learn things fast.
IMHO the guy is super articulate and rational for someone who's got an IQ of 85. See his user page for everything he writes:
http://www.reddit.com/user/Quickening
I think that health care is a great thing, but not a right. I see rights as something other people can't take away from you. You have a right to live, but another person has a right to not be forced to help you to live or ask to make money off of it. If most people want it a certain way, I don't have a problem with them changing it.
...
I prefer to deal with interesting people. I meet a lot of people who think they are interesting because they are smart but they don't really have much to offer to a conversation. I'd prefer a less smart person that has driven a motorcycle across the country than a smart person ho makes all A's and reads all the time.
...
I've thought about how big the universe is, but I can't really grasp it. Most people have problems with sizes they don't have to deal with. It's hard for me to really grasp the size of Jupiter. I know I can say it's X many Earths in size, but I still can't really picture it.
I apologize for making this a rant, but:
Instinctively, when in far mode, I would be inclined to judge feelings by their costs and their benefits. I can see very little benefit to contempt (the emotion I see behind the sneer) - so far as I can determine all it gives you is a filter on the people you spend your time with and energy on. On the cost side, however, contempt impairs your ability to become acquainted, and this will cost you because:
I think this last point is the strongest - by cutting yourself off from a class of experiences, you cut yourself off from a field of knowledge. Even anthropological curiosity ought to impel you to giv...
I was a very bizarre child up to age 10 or so. Wouldn't look people in the eye, walked into walls, talked to myself, didn't make friends, etc. Now essentially none of that shows. I may have "had something" but it's moot at this point.
The only bizarre thing that remains is my near-pathological lack of spatial skills. I can't aim, throw, dance, or drive with anywhere near the ease of a normal person. (I wonder if it's improvable at all?)
I don't know about unrealistic but I found GLaDOS a bizarrely sympathetic character considering she has no qualms about killing you. And she does offer cake.
Wolpaw further describes the idea of using cake as the reward came about as "at the beginning of the Portal development process, we sat down as a group to decide what philosopher or school of philosophy our game would be based on. That was followed by about 15 minutes of silence and then someone mentioned that a lot of people like cake."
ETA: For the non spoiler-averse the song from the end credits of Portal gives a pretty good insight into GLaDOS' personality.
I came to the conclusion that I have autistic tendencies a long time ago - lack of understanding of social cues, constant pattern recognition, stuttering, habitual actions... Given the high autism rates in Silicon Valley, it seems likely to me that there is indeed a genetic component, and "high-functioning" autistics have a heterozygous genotype. (Although I don't think it's yet ruled out that it could be caused by some type of improper socialization.)
However, I seem to have an uncommon level of ability to self-modify (from my discussions with other people, including rationalists), and since discovering rationality I've been attempting to ruthlessly optimize various aspects of myself. For my most recent example, because I didn't understand social cues I took a PUA seminar and within days I could successfully approach and charm people in bars and clubs, a world that I always thought would be inaccessible to me. It turns out I was just unconsciously sending low-status signals, because I never paid any attention to what myself or others were doing.
This also helps me deal with the symptoms as well. I have habitual actions, but I don't allow myself to be disturbed if they...
I did not find reading websites particularly helpful in this regard. I have always been very "book smart" and I love to theorize about things, but I am coming to realize that implicit experiential knowledge is key for success in this world. It's easy to know what high/low status signals are, but it's much harder to become aware of them and know what to do to correct them. Yet it only took a couple hours of in-person training at the seminar to fix the majority of the bad signals.
Despite that nitpick I definitely agree with your point. I needed to construct a mental model of social interaction, and now I can ruthlessly optimize over that as well. I am greatly looking forward to it.
I've read quite a bit of (non-technical) writing about autism -- partly because I thought I fit some of the superficial criteria. But I came to the conclusion that the popular narrative is a bit silly.
Autism is a sensory processing thing. I've never heard of an autistic person without some non-standard sensory stuff. A lot of us may be better at logical thinking than socializing, for various reasons (including habit and preference!) but we mostly deal with sensory stimuli in a perfectly conventional way. I don't get overwhelmed by the sights and sounds of a supermarket. I don't have a visual imagination. I don't find particular textures/tastes/sounds intolerable. I don't get any special zing from stimulation (pen clicking, reflective objects, etc.) These are pretty typical self-described traits of actual autistics, from what I've read from blogs and memoirs. And I don't have a single one of them. Sure, I'm a (mild) introvert, and I'm interested in academic and technical subjects, but I suspect that has absolutely nothing to do with autism.
The empathizing/systematizing brain-types stuff is really odd to me. Empathy and social skills are on one side; detail-oriented thinki...
A relevant comment from a few years ago (on _Lonely Dissent_):
What takes real courage is braving the outright incomprehension of the people around you,
I suspect that autistics are far more willing than neurotypicals to be true iconoclast because many neurotypicals find autistics incomprehensible regardless of what the autistics believe. So the price of being an intellectual iconoclast is lower for autistics than for most other people.
Sounds plausible on the surface, but if the reasoning is "An autistic person will suffer about the same social cost whether or not they are perceived as an intellectual iconoclast, so if they are inclined to be an intellectual iconoclast, they will realize that they may as well allow themselves to do so", then there might be a problem: the real reason might just be that they don't process social costs as well (if at all) in the first place. But then this hypothesis might work if we adjust it to account for that: "An autistic person will be less likely to realize or care about the potential social cost of being perceived as an intellectual iconoclast, so if they are inclined to be an intellectual iconoclast, they will see little reason not to allow themselves to do so". Any thoughts on this?
If your childhood involved... getting... picked last for sports team
I got picked last for sports teams because the other kids were better at sports than me.
Your poll doesn't let responders get out of answering the second question if they haven't been diagnosed. Anyway, I scored a 27 but I'm pretty sure the fact that I have ADHD and some anxiety issues distorts my score.
(Edit: Apparently the DSM prohibits co-diagnosis of an ASD and ADHD which is really interesting. More and more I think a lot of psychological disorders are just random clusters of atypical neurological traits and not organized in any scientifically justifiable way)
Oh, and my approach to normative ethics is basically the opposite of the systematized, axiom-based approach of traditional normative ethics as exemplified by utilitarianism and strong deontology.
I've not been diagnosed but I suspect that I fall in some where under the umbrella spectrum. Our oldest son has infantile Autism, there's something "odd" about our middle son and he's definitely nerdy but he's in a regular class in a regular school, our youngest son has ADHD. All of them score very high on some areas of IQ tests designed for their age group and have a high average score on these tests. The oldest and the youngest had their tests adjusted for their suspected disabilities (weren't diagnosed at time of testing).
My husband and I are "odd" and nerdy. When the psychologist needed to ask additional questions reg. family history and about ourselves, I couldn't resist correcting her spelling error or wrong use of terms and words (pedantic) and when she asked my husband about his field of work, he endeavored on a half hour long monologue until I kicked his ankle. In both cases, we were embarrassed by the other one's behavior, but we couldn't individually see that our own behavior was inappropriate.
We are strange and difficult to get along with according to even our closest relatives and much has been made of my asocial nature all of my life. I sco...
My own take is similar to that of Simon Baron-Cohen: that ....
I got really really confused for a moment. But no, totally different person:
A few comments that might not be too popular.
It occurs to me that people with an impaired social awareness and capabilities are less likely to be aware of their impairment, much like the Anosognosic’s Dilemma. As the Wired survey is a self-diagnosis, I would not place too much confidence in its scores, at least as conventionally interpreted. High scores might suggest a high degree of self-awareness that there is a problem (which is good!)
I also wonder if 'AS' is some innate and unchangeable characteristic of a person, beyond his ability to control, or
I also wonder if 'AS' is some innate and unchangeable characteristic of a person, beyond his ability to control, or if it is more like a learned behavior shaped by experience. This whole 'diagnosis' mentality suggests AS is a medical condition, but if it is not, then we are not helping those who might be able to change, and instead encouraging them to see it as a natural and permanent characteristic of themselves.
AS is innate but very little in the human brain is unchangeable. If you spend enough time playing the the violin you can reliably and permanently alter the amount of the brain that is dedicated to fine motor control of the fingertips. The same applies to social processing. Paraphrasing Tony Attwood here, and emphasizing that this doesn't apply to everyone, many intelligent people with Aspergers' find that they can develop all the 'normal' social behaviors over time. He estimates that in a typical such case the development is just pushed back to 10 years behind what it would be for a neurotypical individual of the same intelligence. Note that the 10 year figure is the same figure given by experts on expertise. You can become an expert in anything with 10 years of practi...
Miscommunication on my part -- at no point have I had access to books of that sort, nor am I sure that they even exist (and there's little use in looking now). I just meant to say that they would have been really useful.
Really the thing that ended up helping me most was having regular sessions with a shrink who could answer my bizarre questions about social activity with answers that didn't rely on common assumptions. That basically allowed me to form and test theories about how NT people worked without suffering negative consequences for being wrong.
Young Aspies are often dumbfounded when they reciprocate aggression in kind and get punished for it while the instigator does not. They need to arrive at a more mature understanding of the Machiavellian nature of social games so that they can more realistically understand what is going on. This is the sort of thing a shrink can explain but many peers will not.
I generally find interacting with people (NT or otherwise) to be approximately as tiring as programming a computer; it's fun for short periods of time and a serious effort for long periods of time, though still often rewarding in the latter case. I almost answered this question by saying that social interaction wasn't tiring, but reevaluated after realizing that I've just grown used to it; other people's behavior is impossible to explain unless they find social interaction significantly less tiring than I do.
I'm not a complete introvert, but I do lean in that general direction.
From the popular literature on the subject, in terms of autism, I'd classify myself as "very slightly autistic, but still basically neurotypical." I don't have great social skills, but they're usually good enough. To the extent that my brain is atypical, it's mostly in other ways; I was diagnosed with both ADD and Tourette's syndrome as a young child. I can't stand not having something to do. I carry a book or portable game system with me everywhere so I have something to direct my mental focus on, and my final line of defense is simply to put my head down and take a nap. If I can't even do that, then I start freaking out. I'm also on antidepressants.
I just took the wired test, and scored a 31. I'm not sure what to make of this. For years now I've wondered whether I have asperger's symptoms, and gone back and forth on it, but never been able to make up my mind - seeking a formal diagnosis seems like waste of time, since there isn't any real treatment. But I AM curious about it.
My opinion seems to go back and forth depending on whose description of the symptoms I'm reading - sometimes I'll read something on asperger's and think "Yes, that's totally me", and other times I'll read something and...
Is there a way to quantify these Gillberg diagnostic criteria ? For example, what does "motor clumsiness" mean ? Presumably, there are various degrees of clumsiness, from "assembles micro-miniature sculptures in his spare time, while balancing on one foot on a highwire", to "can't pick up a coffee cup without breaking it". Similarly, "impositions of routines and interests" can vary from "enjoys fantasy novels" to "talks about elves all the time", to "has a shrine to Tolkien in his room, carries a sword, stabs people with said sword because he thinks they're orcs". There's quite a gamut there.
I scored 17 - almost exactly normal. My brother was, I am sure, an medium functioning Aspergers and an uncle was a highly functioning one. On the other hand, I do not feel like a 'normal'. But that feeling is on a different spectrum. On the autism to schizophrenic spectrum, I am normal and feel it.
'Yes, sometimes.'
I am able to develop temporary 'Aspergers' symptoms in myself through particular kinds of mental activity and suspect that activity might determine personality as much as the other way round.
If I indulge myself doing c.15 minutes of anagramming or similarly highly focused, repetitive thinking, I find myself socially inhibited for the next two hours or so and feel as if I am controlling myself at one remove, my own puppeteer.
Perhaps this is a result of assuming a particular set of mind ('pattern recognition' mode/laser-like focus or somes...
If I indulge myself doing c.15 minutes of anagramming or similarly highly focused, repetitive thinking, I find myself socially inhibited for the next two hours or so and feel as if I am controlling myself at one remove, my own puppeteer.
I am like this and my husband is like this. We're both academics. I call it 'work mode' and try to make sure one of us is always not in work mode when we're watching the kids.
My best friend in graduate school was a pure mathematician and this was very pronounced for her. She would study for 4-5 hours and then discover she couldn't talk, her voice just didn't work. I noticed her voice was about an octave lower. I think her vocal cords relaxed and she wasn't very good at moving her puppet.
I know exactly what you mean about controlling yourself at one remove. I think I have extreme cases of this, related to intense mental work but usually occurring not while working but during a sleep cycle that night. I wake up to discover reality has entirely unraveled for me, and I need to to do some work to 'jump back in the puppet'. In graduate school, a combination of working intensely and not socializing for bouts of time (I love socializing, but I was busy s...
I scored 27. My brother has aspergers (diagnosted at 38 years old) and I am pretty sure both my parents have it, although they won't get tested. I am not sure I have it, although I have many of the characteristics - IQ 132, fast processor, overachiever, say weird things inappropriately, small talk makes me uncomfortable, etc. Compared to my parents and brother, however, I always seemed like the odd one out in our little family. I am super friendly, make friends easily but have the narrow focused, intellectual pursuit thing for sure. I have been seeing a...
26 on the wired test. I am 53. I noticed on many of the questions that i would have answered differently when I was younger, but that I had it seemed rationally figured things out or learned them in therapy.
I have for years wondered if a lot of what goes into scientists is sub-clinical autism/aspbergers. I listen to some of the concerns of parents about their aspberger kids and think "that's like me, it is part of how I got a PhD in Physics."
Anyone here have non-psychotic auditory hallucinations? Apparently they're surprisingly common.
Hmm. This could finally explain a mystery for me regarding my mother. I think she believes that her ancestors talk to her, and I could never reconcile this with the fact that in all other ways, she's a very rational, non-superstitious and pragmatic person.
When I was about 4 -- barely talking because my family was bilingual and I'm less adept at language anyway -- I told my mother I saw 'people' on my eyes. I meant that scratches in my eyes looked like people. To my astonishment, she seemed very happy and started including me in conversations with invisible people. My dad found out and put a stop to it, but I've always wondered about it.
Six years ago at my wedding, I overheard my mother talking about the ancestors with her sister. I decided it was some kind of family delusion. Maybe it's a genetic trait I didn't inherit.
Mentioned this on another thread - I don't know if you are all already familiar with this, but this is probably a good place to point out that there's now pretty good evidence that autism has an "opposite" in schizophrenia; neurotypicality is then in the middle of the resulting spectrum.
(Clarification: This isn't something I actually have much knowledge about at all; this is just something I saw some time ago and the CNV evidence seems pretty compelling.)
I get the idea we should probably be trying to account for this somehow? I'll admit it seems ...
Another neuroatypicality that I find interesting to compare with autism is Williams syndrome. The behavioural symptoms (unlike autism, there are also a lot of physical ones) are a sort of opposite of autism/Asperger's. People with Williams syndrome talk readily -- too readily, in children -- to strangers, and appear usually adept at social conversation. On first meeting unawares someone with the syndrome, one may see nothing amiss. If it is a child, one may be impressed by their apparently mature behaviour beyond their years, but eventually, one realises that there's nothing behind it. They have a facility with the forms but not the function, a "party" personality that can do nothing else.
Williams syndrome isn't an all or nothing condition, there are degrees. A colleague of mine told me of meeting the headmaster of his daughter's school, and when he met the headmaster's wife, he immediately recognised the characteristic physiognomy of Williams syndrome. Sure enough, when he spoke with her, she was unusually affable and charming, but he could see that there was actually a real person there, a competent, intelligent woman.
Since discovering Williams syndrome, whenever I meet someone with a "party personality" my immediate thought is, "can they do anything else"?
For what it's worth, DSM-V eliminated the distinction between Asperger's Syndrome and autism.
I scored 13 on the test. My most autistic trait is that I am not great at conversational eye contact, which the test didn't ask about. I also generally consider myself to be bad at phone conversations.
I'm actually on the ADHD spectrum -- I could make a post of the same format as this one for ADHD, which is probably just as prevalent here as among other forums heavy with programmer-type-people. For some reason I expect that ADHD thread would be controversial, but I guess that really depends on how I framed the questions.
Yes, I'm sorry, I had a mini-panic episode. It's absurd for me to react in these ways, all my posting so far was automatic talk which I didn't actually think. I'm still recovering from years of untreated anxiety and ADHD. I will post something coherent when I'm better.
I scored 20 on Baron-Cohen's AQ test which appears to put me slightly above average but quite a bit below the threshold. Incidentally, Simon Baron-Cohen was my abnormal psychology lecturer at university but I don't really remember much from his autism lectures. I am always quite amused by the fact that he is Borat's cousin. I don't consider myself a utilitarian or a strict consequentialist.
I got a 22 on that test. I am fairly convinced I do not have Aspergers Syndrome, not only because I've not been diagnosed and that's lower than the cutoff point given, but the experiences described for those who have it seem quite different from mine in several respects. I am convinced that I am intensely introverted, however. It's not that I don't like other people, but that I have a lot more energy and enthusiasm when I have plenty of time to myself.
I have not yet been tested for or diagnosed with AS but believe that I may be high-functioning and have learned to cope with or overcome certain aspects of it over time. I scored a 33 on the AQ test and I have a 146 IQ. As a child I was very very quiet with very few friends my own age. I have had two extreme periods of anxiety for otherwise common social situations with no clear reason.
For two years, while in Elementary school, I was so scared to go into class that my father would drive me to school every day (around the corner) and talk to me in the ...
I got 40 on the test, and 5 of Gillberg's 6 criteria for Asperger's apply to me moderately well (all but motor clumsiness). I've never seriously considered the possibility that I could have Asperger's though, so I don't quite know what to make of this.
I'm undecided about consequentialism. In practice, I lean towards rule consequentialism, but I've been withholding committing until I could huddle down in a cave for six months and exhaustively study moral philosophy with no distractions (ha, no desire for systematization there!).
My score on the test was 35, which I found surprising. I felt my answers were fairly mixed between autistic-sounding and not, and was expecting to be closer to average.
I don't think I have anything that could be called autism; for one thing, I am often preoccupied with what other people think to the point of near-madness.
ADHD and Autism share early social difficulties and is nonspecific. One thing that differentiates the two is different profiles of impairment in executive function.
Autism has deficits in verbal working memory, while ADHD has deficits in motor inhibition.
The base rates of ADHD are also much higher than that of autism, so factor that into your calculations.
In a hurry right now, but suffice to say for statistical purposes (regarding Less Wrong) that I've been diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome- however at least on a sentimental level I have very little appreciation for consequentialism/utilitarianism if slightly more for it's preference utilitarian form.
I forgot to add that I'm very good at putting things in to order, structuring, organizing but I can't maintain it. On 6 out of 7 days it looks like my whole life is one big mess and spinning out of control. For about 1 hour, 1 day a week, I look like I've got my stuff together.
Full disclosure: I have been diagnosed with Asperger's (and prior to that, PDD-NOS and ADHD). I am also female and 31 years old at the time of this writing.
All that said, one thing I persistently have trouble with is thinking in terms of "isms" in the first place (well, with the exception of "autism", though that is a neurological configuration rather than an ideology). Hence I have no idea, really, whether my default mode(s) of thought fall into the "utilitarian/consequentialist" schools, and I have a very difficult time fol...
I got 11 (there's nowhere to report this on the poll; I selected '10 or less', as that seemed like where the missing 11 should go based on how the numbers are grouped).
I'm a utilitarian. Before taking the test, I figured I'd get something in the 16-20 range.
I got a 30. It's possible that I could have mild aspergers, but as far as I can tell, I don't match any common psychological pigeonhole.
Also, I skimmed the article and didn't see the request for people who have not yet seen the article not to take the poll until I responded to the poll.
I used to think that I had Autism/Aspbergers. I used to think that the same could be said about virtually everyone on this site. Now I know better. Roko, there is a world of difference between someone like you or I, who, if our parents cared about that sort of thing, could have easily found a psychologist willing to diagnose us with Autism/Aspbergers and someone like Tom McCabe or Alicorn. Perhaps it is not obvious in our interactions with them (as we are, in fact, fairly similar in many ways), and it may not be entirely obvious to others, as most people lack the skill to identify the various shades of non-social, but I think the both of us know that that difference is real.
Took the poll. Got a 34 on the Wired thingy. I did notice that a lot of the questions ('enjoy meeting new people') would have been answered more in the AS direction when I was, say, 20 years old.
I'm a 13 on the AQ scale. In high-school I used to wonder if I was on the Autism spectrum, because I tended to prefer to be alone. I later realized I just had serious social anxiety (I was always a very shy child). My sisters were also shy, and one of them suffered from selective mutism until she was 10.
The good thing about Social Anxiety compared to Asperger's is that exposure therapy can really help break the pattern. Asperger's is really an aspect of the personality, it doesn't change.
You mention at the beginning of your article that those with Aspergers "are often accused of being disrespectful and rude." You also say that they "seldom show affection to others." Then you mention those with Aspergers are "unable to determine the feelings of those around them" and that, " People suffering from Asperger's syndrome can be said to lack both social and emotional reciprocity." Yet in the Gillberg Diagnostic Criteria which you cite there is no mention of a lack of unfeelingness, a lack of empathy and/or a concern for others or rudeness.
Good luck with your research.
You mention at the beginning of your article that those with Aspergers "are often accused of being disrespectful and rude." You also say that they "seldom show affection to others." Then you mention those with Aspergers are "unable to determine the feelings of those around them" and that, " People suffering from Asperger's syndrome can be said to lack both social and emotional reciprocity." Yet in the Gillberg Diagnostic Criteria which you cite there is no mention of a lack of unfeelingness, a lack of empathy and/or a concern for others or rudeness.
Good luck with your research.
Here is another indication of Aspergers that I ran across here and thought that others might like to look at it in connection with their scores on the Aspergers test Roko supplied. Interestingly I was normal on the previous test but have a lot of these features.
The most common structural (morphological) features found in the ASD children included:
Sandal gap toes (59%) Facial asymmetry (46%) Abnormal non-frontal hair whorl (39%) High narrow palate (37%) Attached ear lobes (35%) Hypermobile joints (33%)
Some morphological features were found in the ASD that w...
I'm several days late answering, but FWIW, I scored a 30 but only checked off one of the five diagnostic questions. I've never had my IQ tested as an adult.
I do obsessively pursue my chosen interests but given that one of those is language, I don't have the social / verbal awkwardness. I don't -like- social situations but I can function just fine in them.
33. I was a little surprised, and give more credence to the occasional accusations/suggestions that I could be diagnosed with Asperger's.
I am
1.Here on lesswrong 2.my intelligence is most strongly suited for analytical/mathematical thinking
But, most importantly, i actually was diagnosed with a "maybe aspergers" at a young age. Another doctor overruled it, and said I was severe ADD. But, im on the autism spectrum nonetheless.
Its a good place to be right now. Us science guys own the world.
Are there known genetic correlates of Asperger's or autism?
I believe Asperger's and autism are being combined in the DSM V.
I got an averagish 17, which is well down from my score a couple of years ago. At the same time, however, my thinking has become more utilitarian rather than less.
Call it the difference between desire to socialize and desire to eliminate social influence.
I suspect my boss has high functioning AS. I Googled her personality traits, and a page full of info came up on AS. I am in shock, but now it makes more sense. She does not recognize social cues, lacks empathy (for others), imposes whatever her current interest or issue is, with extreme tenacity, upon others, is extremely indecisive in some areas (not all), and has a nervous 'bark' or clearing of throat. She does not get along with others. However, she is the head anesthesiologist at the local hospital. She is not clumsy, but does have one eye that i...
Lack of empathy is not an autistic trait. Unconventional (possibly unreliable) channels for the apprehension of others' feelings, and unconventional channels for expressing empathy, are, which is often confused for outright lack. I'm also not sure why the position of her eyes is supposed to be relevant to any of this.
Lack of empathy is not an autistic trait.
You beat me to it. I'll add that there is a difference between "reading social cues and inferring probable mental states of others in real time and responding appropriately" and "caring about the situation of others", even though the word empathy is used for both concepts. (Many people are essentially unable to distinguish the two concepts, so closely do they associate them.)
That strikes me as very tangential. Neurotypical coworkers can still be quite unpleasant to deal with, and are not necessarily more amenable to changing their relevant behavior.
I normally get 31 when I take that test. But have been relatively asocial for a few days, and am on lesswrong atm, and I got 38.
Interesting.
I scored 36 on the test, which was way higher than I was expecting. I think I can do a pretty decent impression of a normally social person. Perhaps my responses are skewed by my having programmed for the last 7 hours. Maybe I should take the test again after spending a couple of hours interacting with my wife and kids.
Didn't see the poll until now so not filling it in as per your request, but for the record I got 15.
I scored 17 but was a little worried that my responses were biased by a desire to believe I am socially proficient. I guess I have no reason to believe I suffer from this bias more than the average person.
Does this qualify?
Say, I understand what people will feel when I say something, and I am adept at social situations and humor. However, i dont feel this is "natural" I feel that this process is learned, like an intuition developed for thinking about evolutionary psychology.
I feel i know "what goes on" through an entirelly different way then the people next to me.
I scored 24, responded to the poll. Non-AS that I know of, I do fit "all-absorbing interests" to some extent.
Got 28 on the test, which a bit surprised me as my answers were all over the presumed AS scale. I've been always a mix of AS traits and very non AS traits; for example I have a strong visual imagination that was almost compulsive when I was a kid (e.g. after I saw a movie or a video game certain events and visual styles were frequently and automatically mashed into my view field). I'm also somewhat prone to obsessive attention to an area, interested in gathering various data and trivia, I'm pretty anxious and uncomfortable around new or too much people, ha...
I got 17 on that test (average is 16.4), and 0 on Gillberg diagnostic criteria, and I found plenty of questions highly wtf-ish. This leads me to believe that Aspergers might be a genuine thing - people who consistently reply so far unlike me to those wtf-ish questions must be seriously weird, not just differ in minor quantitative ways.
I'm not sure if I'm really utilitarian, but I certainly find all deontologies used as more than quick heuristics facepalmingly stupid.
My oldest kid was diagnosed with PDD; he's gotten quite a bit more functional since, but he has all of the above. I'll ask him to take the test when he grows up ;)
I've been told that I might be autism-spectrum by non-experts, but the counselors I've talked to suggest I have attention-deficit disorder. I got 20 on the test.
Be careful when doing self-diagnose over the internet. And Asperger's may be going away, to be replaced by high-functioning autism, just another part of the spectrum.
If your childhood involved extreme trouble with other kids, getting bullied, picked last for sports team, etc, but not for an obvious reason such as being very fat or of a racial minority, then add some evidence-points to the "AS" hypothesis.
If someone was not bullied etc despite such "obvious" reasons, that would count against the AS hypothesis, correct?
So, in fact, any bullying is evidence for AS?
EDIT: To combat nonresponse bias, I'd appreciate it if anyone who looked at this post before and decided not to fill in the poll would go and do so now, but that people who haven't already considered and decided against filling in the poll refrain from doing so. We might get some idea of which way the bias points by looking at the difference in results.
This is your opportunity to help your community's social epistemology!
There is some evidence that consequentialist/utilitarian thinking is more common in people with Asperger's syndrome, so I thought it would be interesting to follow that correlation the other way around: what fraction of people who are attracted to rational/consequentialist thinking have what one might call "High-functioning Asperger's Syndrome"? From wisegeek:
Impaired social reactions are a key component of Asperger's syndrome. People who suffer from this condition find it difficult to develop meaningful relationships with their peers. They struggle to understand the subtleties of communicating through eye contact, body language, or facial expressions and seldom show affection towards others. They are often accused of being disrespectful and rude, since they find they can’t comprehend expectations of appropriate social behavior and are often unable to determine the feelings of those around them. People suffering from Asperger's syndrome can be said to lack both social and emotional reciprocity.
Although Asperger's syndrome is related to autism, people who suffer from this condition do not have other developmental delays. They have normal to above average intelligence and fail to meet the diagnostic criteria for any other pervasive developmental disorder. In fact, people with Asperger's syndrome often show intense focus, highly logical thinking, and exceptional abilities in math or science.
This book makes the following point about "High-functioning adults":
"Individuals at the most able end of the autistic spectrum have the most hidden form of this disorder, and as a result, these individuals and their family are often the most disadvantaged in terms of getting a diagnosis. Because they have higher IQs, high-functioning adults are able to work out ways to compensate for their difficulties in communication or in social functioning that are based on logical reasoning."
So if you are a very smart AS person, it might not be obvious that you have it, especially because if you have difficulty reading social situations you might not realize that you are having difficulty reading social situations, rather you'll just experience other people being mean and think that the world is just full of mean people. But there are some clues you can follow. For example this website talks about what AS in kids tends to be like:
One of the most disturbing aspects of Higher Functioning children with Aspergers (HFA) is their clumsy, nerdish social skills. Though they want to be accepted by their peers, they tend to be very hurt and frustrated by their lack of social success. Their ability to respond is confounded by the negative feedback that these children get from their painful social interactions. This greatly magnifies their social problems. Like any of us, when we get negative feedback, we become unhappy. This further inhibits their social skills, and a vicious circle develops.
If your childhood involved extreme trouble with other kids, getting bullied, picked last for sports team, etc, but not for an obvious reason such as being very fat or of a racial minority, then add some evidence-points to the "AS" hypothesis.
High-functioning AS gives a person a combination of strengths and weaknesses. If you know about the weaknesses, you can probably better compensate for them. For reference, the following are the Gillberg diagnostic criteria for Asperger Syndrome:
1.Severe impairment in reciprocal social interaction (at least two of the following)
(a) inability to interact with peers, (b) lack of desire to interact with peers, (c) lack of appreciation of social cues, (d) socially and emotionally inappropriate behavior
2.All-absorbing narrow interest (at least one of the following)
(a) exclusion of other activities, (b) repetitive adherence, (c) more rote than meaning
3.Imposition of routines and interests (at least one of the following)
(a) on self, in aspects of life (b) on others
4.Speech and language problems (at least three of the following)
(a) delayed development, (b) superficially perfect expressive language, (c) formal, pedantic language, (d) odd prosody, peculiar voice characteristics, (e) impairment of comprehension including misinterpretations of literal/implied meanings
5.Non-verbal communication problems (at least one of the following)
(a) limited use of gestures, (b) clumsy/gauche body language, (c) limited facial expression, (d) inappropriate expression, (e) peculiar, stiff gaze
6.Motor clumsiness
If people want to, they can respond to a poll I created, recording their self-assessment of whether or not they fit these criteria. My own take is similar to that of Simon Baron-Cohen: that there isn't a natural dividing line between AS and neurotypical, rather that there is a spectrum of empathizing vs. systematizing brain-types. For those who want to, you can take Baron-Cohen's "Autism quotient" test on wired magazine, and you can record your score on my poll.