Aspies For Freedom

So... my mom wants me to get tested for asperger's. I didn't even say anything to her... she brought it up herself, guess I set off her aspie radar a bit.

I'm a little nervous. How does the testing usually work?

My son was referred to Autism Team by community paediatrician and she mentioned eye contact being poor and that he kept looking around the room instead of at me.  At the time I remember thinking - Well, he knows what I look like and you've brought him into a room with toys and lots of interesting posters on the walls!  Of course, he's not looking at me!"

I am sure it is different with every clinic that does testing, but for my husband it involved a long telephone call with me and the clinician, a packet of about 38 pages of materials and written testing, a two hour appt with the clinician, and we have a follow-up with the psychiatrist.  

That is scheduled for next week.  Will post more following.

I'm not great at Maths either Batman and I got diagnosed. It wasn't even asked.

When I was getting diagnosed, I didn't get asked about maths, either.  There was some basic arithmetic in the IQ test (and I think I got a few of those wrong!) but nothing too drastic.

I had an extra step in my official DX, because my good verbal skills hide a lot of the problems that should have got me diagnosed a long time ago. It went thusly:

1.  I go to psychologist and describe the problems I'm having with social stuff and depression.  He says "have you ever heard of Aspergers Syndrome?" and I cringe, because I want it to be something fixable with a few pills and a self-help book.

2.  Interview and IQ test.  The IQ test also involved stuff on explaining metaphors and 'if X did Y to Z, what would Z do?" type questions which I think were Theory of Mind tests.  The results from that basically came back that I was definitely SOMETHING, but not conclusive as to what.  So then...

3.  EEG.  I've already described that process here: http://www.aspiesforfreedom.com/showthre...#pid198233 although the process might be different for different people, depending on the tester and what they're looking for.  For me, it confirmed there was stuff going on upstairs that corresponded with autism, and I got a bonus DX of ADHD, which nobody (including me) had noticed, what with all the other stuff going on.

Next time we have a thread like this, we should clarify the title and say, I am going to go get tested for Asperger.

The Asperger part is not obvious even to an Aspie.

In Washington D.C., for example, the message "Get Tested for HIV" (especially ages 14 to 24)  is so widespread whenever someone says "Get Tested" you associate it with HIV nowadays.  (It's free and doesn't hurt, it's a spit test)

Well, it IS an Aspie-specific forum.  I would have thought it was understood that "tested" implied "to get an official Aspergers DX" unless otherwise specified.

At least she was diagnosed as having NVLD. I'm pretty sure I have Asperger's after meeting two such people in real life and reading lots of material on it online, yet the psychologist in question told me there was nothing found in the test and I'm just "gifted" (IQ of 137). Even though she knows that I tend to hyperfocus (put your mind temporarilly in a special mode where you can perform better than usual), she somehow doesn't seem to see the possibility that this hyperfocussing in combination with years of practice and algorythmic logics (I do have a talent for maths) can mask many of my limitations IN SPITE OF my telling her about my suspicions of Asperger's and explaining how all knowledge of social behavior was learned algorythmically and didn't come instinctively. Somehow my behavior and past illustrate Asperger's but not my test results.

Not maths in general, but a talent for mathelatical/algorythmic logic can ease the analysis and processing of social behavior.

Correct. However, the more logically you think the better you can analyse the situation and recognise the patterns. Mathematical/algorythmic logic is the purest and most abstract form of logic.

To be fair I'm 27, university educated and wouldn't know an algorithm, logical or otherwise, if it stood in front of me and whistled the theme from Hunt For Red October.  Maybe they just have another name - are they something to do with sums?

I prefer to think of my social analysing as a series of If>Then>Else rules based on experience, rather than "logic".  Humans are not logical creatures, in my experience.

But there's nothing necessarily sensible about If>Then>Else rules.  They're just rote, and can be as inherently ridiculous as you wish to make them.  For instance, you could specify:

IF the sky is full of purple elephants
THEN put your underpants on your head
ELSE stand in a bucket of Chardonnay.

And using logic, in the conspicuous absence of purple elephants, we should all be ankle deep in Chardy.  Of course it's nonsense, but it's logical nonsense, my favourite kind.

So, before you can use If Then Else 'logic' for social interaction, you have to already have a workable set of rules.  And, for me, that came through experience, not logic.

Yup, I understand.  I became a programmer for the same reason. It just really "clicked" with me, which was a delight. Eventually, the machine logic became a comfort and refuge where I felt safe and happy.  Away from the torture of irrational and unpredictable humans.

yes, networking fitted with my visual thinking, the syntax for most coding is easy to read, and I can actually read code and tell what it does; I just havent learnt to write it yet.

its really a matter of time and motivation...

Clearly I'm much older.   My experience is in COBOL, FORTRAN, RPG, C++, Assembler... and CL.  Isn't it nice how learning each language makes it easier to learn another?