ASD/Asperger’s Syndrome Testing: The Lowdown
A week out from ASD/Asperger’s testing, and I’m still a bit bewildered by the sheer volume of data they collected. A user on Reddit recently inquired in the r/Aspergers subreddit what sorts of tests, questionnaires, and activities were involved in testing, and, while it seems to vary to some degree from one testing center to the next--and likely from one country to another--it seems that the standard expectation is for questions about your social skills, cognitive tests to determine skills and IQ, and the occasional activity to see how you function in action.
My test ran just over four hours. It would have been a longer set had I taken a break, but I had prepared to go for the long haul by packing snacks and water. My experience was a bit unique in that I had a PhD psychologist along with a PhD student who was earning his clinical hours. I worked thus with two specialists, both of whom were not only knowledgeable but knew how to communicate with individuals on the spectrum. The patience in listening, the careful explanations, even the manner in which they occasionally redirected me to do what they needed for proper assessment--it all translated to understanding the group with whom they worked most closely. And that made the entire process all the more comfortable for me.
The battery started with a pattern re-creation exercise where I was shown graphical representations of designs and then asked to recreate them with colored blocks. I was timed each turn, and the difficulty grew until I was unable to recreate the last challenge. Frustrated, I asked for clarification on the parameters of the test and was met with vague instructions, which I assumed meant they were also testing me on how I solved the problem. I didn’t solve it, so we moved on to the next test.
Identifying the next item in a pattern is something I enjoy doing, and the pressure of the environment didn’t change this aspect for me; however, there were several for which I simply guessed in the test set. We pushed through them all regardless. Next was describing the meaning or features of various words. They grew in complexity as we went along, and as a linguist by training, I found the activity to be a fun challenge. But that was the end of the IQ portion as far as I could tell, which I thought odd. No math or calculations. No qualitative analysis at all. Just logic and verbal skills, which I suppose match ASD cognitive qualities.
Then came the questions interspersed with activities. The questions and topics were conversational and lent themselves to more open-ended discussions. Tell me about your friendships and relationships. What things to people do that irritate you? Describe what you do to relax. How do you feel in social situations? Tell me about your job and career. The psychologist seemed to understand a great deal of what I mentioned, as if he’d heard it multiple times before.
These questions and discussions were interspersed with activities to, as they phrased it, “get to know you better.” In one instance I was asked to use random objects to create a story; in another I was asked to stand up and retell a very short story I had just read but in my own words. In one I found very odd, I was asked to instruct the proctor on how to perform a common activity as if he’d never been taught how to do it. Each of these was extremely awkward for me, and though I occasionally thought I knew what they were assessing, I often finished the activity thinking they had been assessing something else entirely.
The final set was over 400 statements that I had to rank. Some were how well they applied to me. Others were how long, if at all, the statements had applied. Several questionnaires were on paper but a good portion was on the computer. What energy I had left was sucked out of me by the last bit, and I was extremely relieved when they announced the testing was complete.
To get a better sense of who I was, though, they did ask if they could contact my parents and my husband. I learned afterward that the discussion with my mother was to learn about any developmental issues I had experienced as a child, while the questionnaires they sent my husband were similar to those I had filled out, we presume for comparison with my own perception of my personality and habits.
I have over a week to wait before my appointment with the psychologist to learn the results. It’s an odd sort of anticipation: one the one hand, it would feel like validation to find out I do fit on the spectrum in any capacity because it would explain several issues I have experienced throughout my life; however, it’s a twisted sort of thing to hope for. My husband compared it to hoping for a diagnosis rather than the experience of a disorder, and I agree that that is an apt perspective. Though, it does little to calm my nerves with time left before I find out the full diagnosis.
