autism spectrum quotient
in an apparent effort to spread awareness and support for asperger's and autism diagnosees, some folks have hooked up a facebook app that administers simon baron-cohen's (of cambridge u's autism research centre) 50-question personality test that assesses the extent of autism traits. the test can't make a diagnosis, (many folks with extreme scores still function just fine), but it can indicate how much in common you may have with those diagnosed with autism or a related spectrum disorder, and it seems to be reasonably popular. (if you're curious, you can take it without joining fb and having to authorize am app to steal your data by going to the wired.com site). the average score in the study control group was 16.4, and 80% of those diagnosed with a related disorder were all over 32, so there's your benchmark. have at it.
besides having no trouble scoring well into the 30's, (i've always been good at tests, what can i say), it occurs to me that the entire premise of asperger's and related spectrum disorders is a pernicious and proverbial slippery slope down which the social-gadfly-esque hugger-and-feeling-sharer crowd marginalize, pathologize and pariah-ize anyone who doesn't want to play with them. seriously. i mean, who made up the rule that says socializing is "healthy", while preferring to keep to ones self is not?
those of you who know me know that i have no trouble socializing when i care to. maybe that's why nobody's stamped my forehead with a scarlet A (for asperger's/autism, yo). but i absolutely get why numbers are cool, (if you ever want to win a bar bet, just bet the guy drinking next to you that no matter how tall his beer glass might be, its circumference at the top is longer, and if you'd like to understand pi and diameter sometime, just let me know and i'll happily regale you), and i have no love to lose for people who are always getting their feelings hurt for no logical reason at all. (get over yourself, will ya?). my real problem is with "professionals" who take trivia like the quotient derived from the aforementioned test and try to use it to put individuals in diagnostic pigeonholes, and imply to them that there's something wrong if they choose the library over the theater.
theater sucks, ya know? and i'm quite convinced a good part of our myriad problems here in this country stems from not enough people making not enough trips to the library, and i, for one, would like to see MORE asperger's folks in positions of responsibility than fewer. (aspy's don't collude well, which would eliminate a lot of that pesky party political graft and corruption, for one thing).
until then, leave me alone--i'm working on a math problem.
besides having no trouble scoring well into the 30's, (i've always been good at tests, what can i say), it occurs to me that the entire premise of asperger's and related spectrum disorders is a pernicious and proverbial slippery slope down which the social-gadfly-esque hugger-and-feeling-sharer crowd marginalize, pathologize and pariah-ize anyone who doesn't want to play with them. seriously. i mean, who made up the rule that says socializing is "healthy", while preferring to keep to ones self is not?
those of you who know me know that i have no trouble socializing when i care to. maybe that's why nobody's stamped my forehead with a scarlet A (for asperger's/autism, yo). but i absolutely get why numbers are cool, (if you ever want to win a bar bet, just bet the guy drinking next to you that no matter how tall his beer glass might be, its circumference at the top is longer, and if you'd like to understand pi and diameter sometime, just let me know and i'll happily regale you), and i have no love to lose for people who are always getting their feelings hurt for no logical reason at all. (get over yourself, will ya?). my real problem is with "professionals" who take trivia like the quotient derived from the aforementioned test and try to use it to put individuals in diagnostic pigeonholes, and imply to them that there's something wrong if they choose the library over the theater.
theater sucks, ya know? and i'm quite convinced a good part of our myriad problems here in this country stems from not enough people making not enough trips to the library, and i, for one, would like to see MORE asperger's folks in positions of responsibility than fewer. (aspy's don't collude well, which would eliminate a lot of that pesky party political graft and corruption, for one thing).
until then, leave me alone--i'm working on a math problem.
posted by kad barma at 1:46 PM
1 Comments:
..And if you look at the personality traits and *types* of some of the greatest figures in History, I would venture to say that many fall along certain extremes. Of course, we didn't have all the fancy terminology back then, but I'm sure we could identify it now just with biographies and other primary sources.
Thank goodness that we (as in society) plodded along for millennia without having to take really energetic-hyper-creative kids, slap them with an "ADD" label and then medicate them with amphetamines, or take really creative-introverted-mathematical/musical kids and slap them with a "cousin of autism" label along with a stigma, medications, and the self-fulfilling prophecies to go with it.
At some point, much of the labeling and the "work-arounds" that schools and families need to bring to bear just seems self-indulgent at best, and destructive at worst.
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