The autism-spectrum quotient (AQ) measures autistic traits and has been studied in different countries, sometimes with the English version, and sometimes with translated versions. However, the language of the questionnaire might influence non-native English speakers’ answering tendency. In the current study we compared the responses on the AQ of multilingual Malaysians (96 participants filled out the AQ in English and Mandarin, and 79 participants filled out English and Bahasa Malaysia). Participants scored higher on the English AQ compared to the Mandarin AQ, whereas there was no difference between the English and Bahasa Malaysia AQ score. Analysis of the response style suggests the same person might display discrepant response styles in different languages, which seems to be related to language proficiency.

自闭症谱商 (AQ) 衡量自闭症特征，并已在不同国家/地区进行了研究，有时使用英文版，有时使用翻译版。然而，问卷的语言可能会影响非英语母语者的回答倾向。在目前的研究中，我们比较了多语种马来西亚人对 AQ 的回答（96 名参与者用英语和普通话填写了 AQ，79 名参与者填写了英语和马来西亚语）。与普通话 AQ 相比，参与者的英语 AQ 得分更高，而英语和马来西亚语 AQ 得分没有差异。对反应风格的分析表明，同一个人可能在不同语言中表现出不同的反应风格，这似乎与语言能力有关。