Abstract
The broad autism phenotype (BAP) is a set of personality and language characteristics that reflect the phenotypic expression of the genetic liability to autism, in non-autistic relatives of autistic individuals. These characteristics are milder but qualitatively similar to the defining features of autism. A new instrument designed to measure the BAP in adults, the Broad Autism Phenotype Questionnaire (BAPQ), was administered to 86 parents of autistic individuals and 64 community control parents. Sensitivity and specificity of the BAPQ for detecting the BAP were high (>70%). Parents of children with autism had significantly higher scores on all three subscales: aloof personality, rigid personality, and pragmatic language. This instrument provides a valid and efficient measure for characterizing the BAP.
Note: This questionnaire is meant to be administered to individuals with an autistic relative to assess if they have traits that are similar to autism but not enough for a diagnosis, ig?
I would like to read your thoughts on the scale and general concept of this scale. Also, feel free to share your scores!
Link the the actual article.
My biggest complaint to this questionnaire is that they don’t define what is “very rare” vs “rare” vs…etc. My interpretation on it could be different from another autistic and drastically different versus an NT as we could have drastically different interpretations of just the meanings of the possible answers. For instance “very rare” could be once in 2 months or it could be once in 5 years depending on the person.
Yes! The options are pretty vague because they depend respondents having a standard idea of what those abstract ranked answers mean. I need concrete definitions. Otherwise, the individual item’s scale is partially dependent on what I think those words mean in relation to the statistical outcome of respondents that were used to establish the psychometrics of the test. I have confidence that the methods used by researchers that develop these scales are sound and based on statistical analyses paired with valid and tried measures, but I still get hung up on responding to the items.
Funnily (is this even a word?), I completed an executive functioning assessment for my autism therapist about a month ago. After I completed it, I sent her an email that took me ~30 mins to write and proof because I had concerns with the wording of the questions and was worried that the exam might not properly reflect my experiences. There’s one I remember was asking something about, “I get upset quickly or easily over little things.” The available options for the responses were something like the one in the BAP questionnaire, but there were only 3 options. The concern over this item was with the wording of the question. I argued that if I’m easily upset over things, then they aren’t insignificant to me. I could try to guess based on what I’ve seen in other people or what they have told me, but that would based on what they think is insignificant. I rate how significant something is to me by how much it affects me. The item is really assessing circular logic. If I answer “never”, then my logic is sound. If I answer “often”, then I’m not making sense because clearly the things that upset me easily are significant to me.
I completed this questionnaire before reading about it to limit any possible impact my knowledge of the scale could have on my responses. When I got the scores,
Aloof: 4.25
Pragmatic Language: 4.17
Rigid: 4.17
I thought, “Hmm, maybe I’m not that autistic after all.” Then, I saw the statistics of the study here, and cracked up. I’m definitely 100% autistic. When will this impostor syndrome end?
I question it sometimes(rarely, but sometimes) and yeah, my score. I assume higher is better though :)
Aloof: 4.92 Pragmatic Language: 5 Rigid: 5.59
I got
Aloof: 4
Pragmatic Language: 4.17
Rigid: 2.67
my rigidity is very low, I’m definitely not autistic :D
Or you got the ADHD & Autism combo. Routines are more of a suggestion, but you don’t have the motivation to keep them. Like, yeah, I should put away my clothes, but that seems like extra work. I’ll just leave them in the pile. (There are multiple piles)
Aloof 4.1 That’s quite high.
Riged 5.1 That is very high.
Language 3.7 That’s not so bad… look at statistics never mind.
I’m going to be happy about managing to get a 5 on a chart that put 4 at the top. That is something right.
That is something right.
Yes, that is definitely a thing, and one I seem to prefer.
I’m over the top on all, too. 4.5, 3.67, and 3.5 I’m not diagnosed autistic, but my wife and son thinks I am, and on all other tests I’m in range. Where is the details on what these results mean?
I think you’d have to read the article to get the best understanding. I’ll try to give a summary though.
Basically, the scale isn’t meant to assess for autism exactly. It’s based on results that have found autism to have genetic links, so the scale is meant for genetic family of autistics to test for autism-like traits. They call this typifying concept Broad Autism Phenotype (BAP) and has three personality characteristics: 1) aloof, 2) rigid, & 3) pragmatic language. They define the characteristics as follows:
aloof personality is defined as a lack of interest in or enjoyment of social interaction; rigid personality is defined as little interest in change or difficulty adjusting to change; and pragmatic language problems refer to deficits in the social aspects of language, resulting in difficulties communicating effectively or in holding a fluid, reciprocal conversation.
People that meet the researchers’ criteria for BAP tend to have fewer “high-quality intimate relationships” and “more deficits in use of social language” than parents of children with Down’s Syndrome. I didn’t see them make any comparison to allistics or other groups, but I skimmed the article, so maybe they did.
Regarding the scale: The researchers administered the scale to a nonrandom sample of 2 populations: 1) parents of diagnosed autistics from an established Autism Registry and 2) parents of allistics with no first-degree autistic relatives. They administered a structured clinical interview to the first group to assess for BAP. This created two groups: 1) BAP present and 2) BAP absent. In other words, the former were clinically deemed to have autism-like personality traits, and the latter were deemed to not. The group of parents with no first-degree relatives served as a control group. They then administered the BAP scale you took to all of the participants and got the results presented in this histogram. As you can see, the scale matched up well with their clinical assessment, so the scale seems to be working properly.
As far as what it means: The score is just a measure of the presence of those 3 traits. The higher the score, the more present they are. One would expect autistics to have higher scores that the BAP group, but I didn’t see if they said that and there may be some validity issues with that idea anyway. It would be weird for autistics to score lower than the BAP group though. Additionally, it’s not meant to diagnose autism, and BAP isn’t really a diagnosis. It’s type they made up using DSM4 criteria of autism. Anyway, if your scores fall with in the range of the little black tails on top of the BAP present group, then you may meet their criteria for BAP. If your scores fall within the tails of either of the other two groups, then you would likely be more similar to them in regards to BAP. However, the sample was nonrandom, so we can’t say that with nearly decisive confidence.
Layman’s answer regarding your particular scores: There’s some evidence that hints you might be deemed BAP if they clinically interviewed you. This could possibly give you some insight into your social life if you tend to have less close friends and difficulty picking up and using communication in person.
Street answer: You might be kinda autistic, which may explain some problems you have with people. It doesn’t necessarily mean you are kinda autistic, fully autistic, or neither. If you would like to try other autism tests, check out the Helpful Resources link in the side bar and feel free to share your results.
Thanks for that. I did skim the article, but didn’t find the definitions for each of the three. I have taken other tests. I’m mostly helped to understand how I act and interact, and it helps my wife see me differently, mostly in the different perspective I have and when I’m stuck on something but she’s moved on. I’ll look at the other links, too.
I’m nt and got 2, 2.25, and 2. The paper reference definitely put things in perspective.
Here are mine…
Aloof: 5.67
Pragmatic Language: 4.25
Rigid: 5.17
SUPER AUTISM!!!
The ‘aloof’ description cracks me up- there’s a photo of me possibly 5 or 6 years of age with me looking ‘aloof’ (my mothers description). I look so not interested and ‘over it’…I’d actually post it here for a laugh, but I’d rather remain anonymous
HOW THE FUCK WAS IT NOT PICKED UP ON???
Oh I forget, I’m a woman and I slip under the radar 🤣
edit ‘years of age’
Not related to the article, at all, but it just popped up in my head. Is having an autistic child related at all to drug use? As in party drugs, nothing too heavy (weed, molly, acid).
Have a friend who has an autistic daughter, was just wondering if this was somewhat related (we used to party back in the day, I know he did a lot more shit than I did… him and his, later on in life, wife… though she didn’t do as much as him as well).
We’d probably see higher rates of it in societies that used those drugs often, which afaik we don’t
specifically mescaline, mushrooms, ayahuasca/dmt, and weed have all been used by humans for a long time, and I haven’t heard anything about higher rates of neurodivergence in those societies
i could see mdma having an impact like that though, since it’s much riskier than psychedelics and weed (iirc it can be cardiotoxic, neurotoxic, and much more likely to be addictive than those) and we don’t have historical/traditional users of it to look at
I don’t know much about that. I remember that when I was reviewing my family history for the assessment process, I learned that my mother smoked cigarettes while pregnant with me. I looked it up, and there were studies that linked smoking tobacco cigarettes while preggars with an autistic child. I don’t know if it’s the smoking is a spurious relationship or causal tho.
Sheesh, I knew I was autistic but not 5+ out of 6 in each category autistic. The imposter syndrome is real. 😂