W3bbo said:Dr Herbie said:*snip*That test is interesting, because despite me having a formal diagnosis for AS, I completed that test with a score of 18 - Average Male.
Some of the questions are a bit ambigiuous and open to interpretation: "I prefer to do things by my own" - I certainly enjoy social activities in groups of 4 to 7 people, but I prefer to work alone and I feel that distinction is important. However, going deeper, one reason I prefer working alone is because I'm not always confident of the other team member's competence (this past academic year we had a team-based module where we had to make a game together, 2 members of the team skived off entirely, and another had glaring deficiencies in his work. I'm willing to give teamwork a try, but only if the team is good to begin with).
Other questions about being impolite, for example, are only indicative of AS if that person hasn't learned and developed social skills. I know a couple other people with formal AS diagnoses who are much better socially than "normal" people otherwise: by focusing on improving sociability you can often end up better than someone who didn't; it's like judging if someone is dyslexic by asking them to complete a written essay and checking it for signature dyslexic errors, without considering the substantial portion of dyslexic people who carefully think before writing anything down and correcting themselves afterwards, thus making them come across as perfect writers and much better than a non-dyslexic person.
are only indicative of AS if that person hasn't learned and developed social skills.
Social "skills" is a fun phrase. There's a different between social rules and social empathy. Normally you learn the rules by empathy but that connection is lacking in some AS folks. As soon as the rules can be expressed verbally (and often enough) you can learn them and apply them. Is that what most people call social skills though? Probably not, it is more akin to programming a proper response (especially if NLP is involved when learning the rules). Of course when you get dumped into a situation where you don't know the rules at all, well, that's all kinds of comedy.
It's also interesting to see how some of the AS behaviours are also present in ASPD. Isn't modern medicine fun? 
