Testful Assessment

[bentHnau]

I have heard people describe this sort of assessment before and I am perhaps facing it myself. I don't understand it. Does anyone here think that it is at all possible to determine whether or not an adult with no prior ASD diagnosis (so symptoms are presumably not obvious) has Asperger's Syndrome based primarily on the results of formally administered tests? For example, I was given:

• brief personal questionnaire (age, marital status, how high/low one perceives oneself to be in the social/class hierarchy of one's community, sexual preference, etc.)
• WAIS-IV (subtests as listed here)
• Rorschach
• Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Questionnaire
• Wisconsin Card Sorting task
• Social and Emotional Perception Test (looking at faces and listening to voices to determine the emotion displayed)

There might be a few more tests conducted, but there was really no interview portion, no back-and-forth conversation between me and the test administrator except maybe fifteen minutes of mainly factual questions about my education, professional life, relationships, and medical history. No psych history except a disclosure of a depression diagnosis over a decade ago.

What I want to know is this: in your opinion, how can someone assess and diagnose such a pervasive condition without having gotten to know the client? Are these tests enough?

 

[Etzelaire]

Maybe they do it in order to depend exclusively in objective results taking of the equation the human subjectivity.

 

[apsie]

Those tests alone would not provide anyone a conclusive answer.

 

[Sherri]

Benthnau, here's my uneducated but intuitive opinion: Aspergers has so many nuanced aspects - and levels of these aspects - that statistical data crunching is the best we can do now. I'm beginning to believe that Aspergers is more of a diversity than disability, as I recently read. The "disability" part of it is our culture's love affair with extroversion.

 

[AsheSkyler]

It does seem odd they are going strictly by tests instead of a combination of testing and chatting. But I haven't read about many testing procedures, so maybe it's quite routine for some facilities?

Benthnau, here's my uneducated but intuitive opinion: Aspergers has so many nuanced aspects - and levels of these aspects - that statistical data crunching is the best we can do now. I'm beginning to believe that Aspergers is more of a diversity than disability, as I recently read. The "disability" part of it is our culture's love affair with extroversion.

Heehee, while I say "disability" refers to all the annoying sensory issues that don't let us jam at rock concerts, and we are normal socially while everybody else has a disability that makes them clingy. Together, we represent the "diversity" aspect.

 

[Spiller]

My experience has been that I am usually not believed, 30 years of practice at hiding my differences I suppose, until I took all the online tests I could find and presented them to a therapist, who then revised his opinion.
I know I'm different, but I can't see how I am from the outside.. if I say I've always felt different and isolated, most say "well, everyone feels like that sometimes".
But, I say, for me it's all the time, always!
"It can seem like that when you're down", they say.
.. And they don't get it.
People, including therapists, subconsciously compare with their own experience and assume that that's what I'm saying.
So I guess I'm saying that, at least for adult Aspies, the test results are more important than the interview.

 

[Sherri]

My experience has been that I am usually not believed, 30 years of practice at hiding my differences I suppose, until I took all the online tests I could find and presented them to a therapist, who then revised his opinion.
I know I'm different, but I can't see how I am from the outside.. if I say I've always felt different and isolated, most say "well, everyone feels like that sometimes".
But, I say, for me it's all the time, always!I
"It can seem like that when you're down", they say.
.. And they don't get it.
People, including therapists, subconsciously compare with their own experience and assume that that's what I'm saying.
So I guess I'm saying that, at least for adult Aspies, the test results are more important than the interview.

Great assessment!