Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Study re; autistic tendencies and math professions

Wha-huh? Naw! you're joking, right? Pulling my leg?

ooh! i'll have to take that one tomorrow. the spoiler content sounds like me! bon soir

I just took the autism quiz. I scored a 41. Being fascinated by numbers, I had the rest of my family members take the quiz too.

I scored 17. I have a fascination with numbers and patterns on the one hand but like chitchat on the other. I really enjoy yakking with other people at the park or in a line. I wonder if my strong inclinations in each category are out of synch with the norm?

I had friends who used to accuse me of being a calculator because I could pull phone numbers up so readily. When a passenger in a car, I often stare out the window collecting data on whatever strikes my fancy (number plates, for example). I do this even if I'm barking at my kids to settle down back there! (I also have to force myself NOT to look at number plates when I'm driving; I'm pretty successful in that regard).

Anyone else?

Val

I thought the same about this one! The question strikes me as implying that you have ADD if you don't lap up every dull paragraph that comes your way. I mean, isn't the quality of inducing loss of focus inherent to stuff that's uninteresting?

Count me among the cases of mild ADD. Let's turn this around and say that our ADD tendencies come from being intelligent, and then tie them to the behavioral issues so many of our kids have in school.

Val

Which is when we'll collapse into a state of happy catatonia until the first panicked phone call happens (My roommate leaves her dirty underwear on the floor! I can't take this anymore!!).

Oh no! My Gifted Cat just got hold of DS8's unfinished box of "grape" flavored Nerds and is manically bashing them everywhere!

Val

I scored a 20 on the autism thing; somewhat high for a gal I guess. It would be very funny to me if I've just been boring people to tears with my conversations for the last 30++ years and have no clue!



Too funny Cathy!!
I could definitely see my sis and Mom in the 'fascinated with numbers' questions. I will have to forward to sis!
The main reason I think I do ok in conversations is my Mom used to say I really have a gift for understanding people, but maybe coming from her that wasn't such a big compliment...

SPG, I'll come to your party if I can bring a book and read in the corner part of the time.

I scored much higher on the autism test (32) than I thought I would and had to restrain myself from retaking it like Dottie to make myself "normal." Would anyone else have scored much closer to normal when you were younger and had more patience for parties because you thought you were supposed to enjoy them more?

Thanks for the laugh today to balance out the good cry from the poetry thread.

OK - i was going to be done with this, but woke up thinking "i wonder how one scores on the test relates to meyers-briggs personality profiles? I wonder this because I know i'm in a minority here with my ENTP. Well, spocks and mathies, did you score higher on the autistic tendencies test?

Dottie - i had troubles with the theatre vs museum question too! (Aw, man, do i have to choose!?)

I was dead average on the autism quiz... but then I took the ADHD quiz and wandered away in the middle.... I don't even remember my (eventual) score because that was yesterday and by the time I came back to it I'd completely forgotten where I had the link from, but suffice it to say it was pretty darn high.

But given how much of that intervening time I spent thinking about whether my general tendency to say "definitely" more often than not was a factor in both my "not autistic" and "oh look something shiny" results, and whether that was taken into account in the design of the quizzes or if maybe they could be completely wrong, or if that should bear out in the statistics anyway, and just how well were they tested, and how many ways could you have a correlation of either one that didn't prove to be diagnostic.... I don't think I even need to take the OCD quiz.