The problem with 'AQ tests' (Autism Quotient tests)

Another excerpt from the webinar hosted by Rob Bernstein and Marcia Eckerd, featuring myself and Lyric Holmans of Neurodivergent Rebel.

The AQ test was useful to me once, as an autistic person with certain autism-related difficulties. But it's not flawlessly reliable.

Autistic Not Weird-related links-

[gatorwoman-the-real-one]

I've recently been diagnosed with autism and I'm dealing with Autism Impostor Syndrome because there are some aspects that really don't apply to me, even though I relate to most of the aspects. At the very least, I can accept that I'm neurodivergent (I'm an HSP, which my therapist also considers to be neurodivergent). The main issue I had with the autism tests was they're so black and white and I'm highly contextual, and I was answering the questions very literally, when so much of the time if they had changed the wording of the question to be less specific, it would've applied to me (words like "never" are silly to me because life is rarely that clear-cut). Taking the test in person with my therapist helped because she was there to help me navigate the intent of the question and also she understands the differences between the male and female experiences of neurodivergence. I've recently heard one autistic man says he thinks it presents differently in different people under different circumstances, which makes SO much more sense to me and helps me believe my diagnosis a tiny bit more. Thanks for making these videos and thanks for making them SHORT. My attention span can be quite sporadic, especially when I get overwhelmed.

[victoriab]

I find another thing with the AQ test is that it can very easily feed into the idea of ‘everyone’s on the spectrum’. My group of friends is certainly more heavily neurodivergent than a typical sample of people, but at a time when I didn’t know them very well, it became a bit of a fad to do the AQ test. And hence, a significant number of jokey comments along the lines of “I’m more autistic than you” and significant ‘fun’ about a couple of people who were ‘more autistic’ than the person who was at that time trying to get a diagnosis. I tried to say that I was uncomfortable and that that’s not how the test worked, but people very much did not ‘get it’ and I was basically told to stop being a downer cos it’s all just fun. Of course, I was the only one in the group who actively had a diagnosis, but apparently that didn’t qualify me to have an opinion contrary to people’s fun.

They are good people in the main, but public usage of something that makes it look like there’s a scale of autism that includes all the range of human experience feels like it significantly plays into modes of thinking that lead to the minimising of autistic people’s experiences as things ‘everyone feels/thinks/does’, with the consequent lack of ‘accommodation’ etc. and a strong dose of judgement for not actually being just like everyone else

[Goldmangun]

Brilliant point, eloquently put, Chris!

[joanneheadland]

Oh wow, thanks for this revelation! I’m not diagnosed as being on the spectrum but our daughter is. We both struggle when we have to answer multiple choice questions about ourselves and it never occurred to me that it could be anything to do with masking. For me, when I’m answering and I can’t decide on ‘the right answer’ (usually because it’s not 100% spot on) my overriding thought is that it means I’m going to be lying.

[JoshuaDavidson]

It's hard to drop the mask. I recommend that people using the AQ fill it in "like you are having a medium hard day", and "be aware of answering low for things you put a lot of effort into not doing", on a medium hard day, assume you don't have the energy to run that personal redirect.

[musicteacher]

100% I did that. Took an autism test and scored somewhat autistic, then realized I had "masked" my answers to be "sociall correct", took the test again and I am definitely autistic.