A bunch of the characteristics in the autism cluster on inventories - disliking or avoiding social experiences, not knowing how other people feel about you, looking to other people to learn the rules - are also part of being (socially) anxious. I'm not sure what to do with that.

Thought 1: inventories are trying to ask you a bunch of things to suss out your place in the cluster. Just answering the anxious overlapping ones with high scores but nothing else won't cause a mix-up all that often, it just turns out there's an anxiety subscore.

Thought 2: Maybe one could be confused on an inventory, but in a clinical setting, it would be unusual to be confused. I think this is @danielmessinger 's guess.

Thought 3: They could look similar on an inventory but feel really different from the inside

Thought 4: people might actually confuse them in each other and themselves, and as a subset of that, maybe there is actual overlap/comorbidity something?

I am intrigued and confused! And have been since @nataliebeatrice pointed out this fact about autism assessments