ASD traits or ASD?

I still find it difficult to explain to people what Aspergers is but there are common themes.. Complex thoughts as you put, are a way of ensuring your social encounters are correctly handled. This causes anxiety, stimming and more thinking which becomes tiring (shut down) or you blow your top (melt down). There are a lot of other "traits.. , sensitivity to noise, light, pain and or smell. Picky eaters. Obsessive in thoughts, passtimes and behaviour. Like routines and structure. Cant multi-task or easily modify thinking. Hate small talk and think its pointless. Tend to stare or look away all the time. Finally, Social Masking which is more perfected in woman, where you can appear normal to everyone but in your mind you are thnking of trying to fit in, copy behaviour and sometimes thinking if something else.. 18months is a long time to wait and your only option for a quicker diagnosis  would be private but this will cost about £2000!

Actually I found the scoring keys for the AQ50 and EQ40, so just I scored the questionnaires I sent for my referral. I scored 34 for the AQ one, and 15 for the EQ40. Both results surprised me. I thought I had more empathy than that but 15 seems pretty low. And I expected I would end up with a more borderline score for the AQ. I guess at least it means they should take my referral seriously since I seem to score above the 32 threshold.

That's very helpful, thank you.

Sure, I got all three of part A:

* Deficits in social-emotional reciprocity, 

* Deficits in nonverbal communicative behaviors used for social interaction,

* Deficits in developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships

and I got one of part B:

* Hyper- or hyporeactivity to sensory input.

What I was missing was at least one more out of part B: 

* Stereotyped or repetitive motor movements,

* Insistence on sameness, inflexible adherence to routines, 

* Highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus.

At the ADOS, it was noted that I do have restricted interests and have rigid thinking (from memory) so that gave me another *two*, I think.

Same here. I found a scoring sheet online (not sure how accurate it was) and tried to score myself, it was slightly above average but not a super high score, but being a woman I wonder how that comes into play. The EQ I scored way lower than I expected I would.

Would you mind explaining what the 4 pieces were for you? Then the fifth?

Good to know, thanks. I've already done the AQ50 as well as the EQ. I was indeed wondering if there was a more specific DSM5 questionnaire. Also I wonder what the difference usually is in the AQ50 results between men and women, since I've seen a lot about how differently ASD shows in men and women (biologically speaking I believe).

Indeed - I was given 4 pieces following my diagnostic interview & referred for ADOS, then they gave me all 5 :-). The wait in between wasn't pleasant at all.

I love that analogy.

Having 4 types of pieces would suck though, being an outcast from both sides.

As for questionnaires-I was sent AQ and EQ to complete before being accepted on the waiting list.

There are a lot of questionnaires around, perhaps the AQ50 is one of the first to try (Google brings up links to it). It is relevant to the DSM 5 criteria but only (as far as I know - I've never thought about it specifically before) via the fact that it looks for the same condition. I can't think of any tests that explicitly and obviously go through the DSM 5 criteria one by one, if that's what you're looking for?

That's very helpful, thank you. Are there any questionnaires relevant to the DSM 5 criteria?

So what would it mean to have autistic traits, but not a full autism diagnosis? Are they things than can be worked on, treated with CBT and the likes? Would I be expected to get over them? Or are these traits as serious and relevant as having ASD, but the person just doesn't have all the traits? I'm just trying to think about what would happen if they came back saying I have traits rather than ASD. Because I'm 100% sure I at least have traits. Just not sure what that would do if you see what I mean. 

That's a good analogy, but I would say that it's not so much about how many pieces you have, but what type those pieces are; if you've got a piece of blue sky, a piece of cloud, a piece of grass, a piece of road and a piece of brick wall, then you have ASD irrespective of how many of those types of piece you have. If you have even 60 pieces of sky and 20 pieces of grass, plus a bit of road and a bit of wall you have autistic traits because you're still missing a piece of cloud. But you could be diagnosed with only 5 pieces!

Autistic people are all different because it's so incredibly unlikely that any two of them will have the same pieces of sky, cloud, grass, road, and brick.

This is based loosely on the DSM V criteria where you need 5 types of symptom (A1, A2, A3 plus two out of B1, B2, B3, B4) to be diagnosed as ASD.

Yeah I think 40 or 50 would probably get some kind of diagnosis like "has autistic traits"  is some such rather than a full on diagnosis of autism.

I really like this analogy (much better than the one about being pregnant)

The problem is how to correct count the pieces (and what if have 40-50 could I say “a little bit autistic” then? Broader Autism Phenotype? Someone in between?)

I read a great analogy a while back...it went something like this

Imagine autism is a 100 piece jigsaw. Everyone has 6,8, maybe 10 pieces (but it doesn't make them "a little bit autistic"). If you have say 40 or 50, you may well think "ooh am I?" and perhaps seek diagnosis, and you've definitely got autistic traits. If you've got 75-80 pieces, then you'll get a diagnosis.