I recognize that this could be considered “old news”, but a while back, Wired magazine put up a link to an Autism Quotient test/questionaire, measuring the extent of autistic traits in adults. The test makes no claims to be a tool for diagnosis, but points out that higher scores correlate highly with diagnosed autism spectrum disorder (like, say, Aspergers); by their numbers, eighty percent of control group testers who scored 32 or higher had been diagnosed with some autism-related disorder (the mean score was 16.7).

I scored a 33.

Not that I’m self-diagnosing myself, but I have noticed that I do exhibit several common traits associated with those sorts of disorders (tending toward hyper-focus, occasional difficult picking up on social cues), but hardly all of them (for example, I don’t necessarily have an issue with empathy – the “putting myself in another’s shoes” definition of it anyway).

Nor am I particularly concerned about posessing some of these traits; some of them make me quite good at my job, for example. Others represent possible weaknesses, but can be overcome with awareness and adaptation. It’s just a matter of self-awareness, and the results of this short, superficial instrument do tend to support observations I’ve previously made about myself.

I’d suspect that most socially-awkward introverts (the nerds, dorks, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies* et cetera of the world) would score in the upper range as well; especially if they tended to overthink the motivations behind questions and potentially break the test (which, I concede, it’s possible I did).

Of course, this test is almost certainly presented mostly for the amusement factor, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t some value in it beyond that.

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*- they all adore me. they think I’m a righteous dude.