Autism Rating Scale

The autism rating scale (ARS) investigates the personal level of experience of individuals with schizophrenia in real-world social encounters. It originates from previous qualitative analyses based on in-depth interviews with persons with schizophrenia in clinical and research settings. The main purpose is to reliably collect "soft" phenomena that are traditionally not included in symptoms checklists, reflecting the subjective experiences of individuals with schizophrenia in the real world. These subtle, abnormal phenomena are reported by patients when asked about the way they experience and act in the world they actually live in. ARS includes 16 distinctive items grouped in 6 categories: hypo-attunement, invasiveness, emotional flooding, algorithmic conception of sociality, antithetical attitude toward sociality and idionomia. For each item and category, an accurate description and a list of examples are provided. Different intensities of phenomena are assessed through a Likert Scale by rating each item according to its quantitative features (frequency, intensity, impairment and coping). ARS may help to discriminate schizophrenia from other psychoses, and cluster A personality disorders from other personality disorders. This scale may also contribute to the assessment of features of clinical high risk or ultra high risk syndromes.