Yeah, it is. A major part of an autism diagnosis is how others perceive you. For example, as a neurodevelopmental disorder, bringing in people who knew you as a child to describe how you behaved is heavily emphasized in adult diagnoses. If they wanted to know what you think of yourself, they would’ve asked that.
If you ask what other people think of you, well now you are right back to what you guess other people think of you. Which may be more projecting your own thoughts than them.
Unless testing for paranoia, you need to keep it concrete as you can.
The being too literal is so severe that others will absolutely tell you. Your internal thought process recognizing both the intended figurative meaning whole also considering the literal is fine.
Maybe it should be more about falling to recognize figurative communication rather than ability to consider the literal meaning of communication.
Well, yes, because there’s imperfect data. I said that others’ perception of you is important, and the extent to which they remark on that is a proxy. Do I really need to explain the concept that you can’t read minds or (practicably) gather a representative sample of people in your life into a neuropsychologist’s office and thus what people tell you is the closest proxy?
For a post about taking things too literally instead of putting words in someone else’s mouth, you’re ironically putting words in my mouth instead of taking what I’m saying literally.
I didn’t sense any hostility in OP’s reply. It sounds like they’re referring to the test, stating its own directions. They’re not making any claims about it, or expressing a lack of understanding, let alone putting words in anyone’s mouth?
You’re right, witnesses to our childhood are important for adult diagnoses. The issue OP’s referring to isn’t whether or not others’ perceptions should be part of the picture, but rather that the wording of many autism tests (such as the one in the post) ask a question that depends on you recalling what others have perceived about you. The test I took didn’t use “say,” instead some questions expected me to somehow know what others think about me. These sorts of questions are kind of twisted to ask an autistic person, since it requires a recursive practice of the social skills we famously struggle with.
Bringing in people from childhood would be far more sensible. However, many of those seeking a diagnosis aren’t going to be brought down that route, as the first thing we’re given is this type of questionnaire. After that, the psych interviews us. I can’t speak for all, but for me that’s all I was given.
People tend to not be super honest about your perceived negative qualities because it’s considered impolite. If the doctor or whoever wants to know what people around me think of me, it needs to be given to those people as an anonymous poll.
e: This kind of question also assumes I interact with anyone to the degree that they have any idea what I’m like.
People also tend not to be very observant or, especially with parents, they have thrown their head in the sand. “No no you are/were a totally normal child”.
That was my parents. “Weird” or “not normal” was bad so the reassurance was always that I was normal. Meanwhile
my sister: yeah but remember how she used to watch that one DVD every single day for a year? And she read the same 5 books over and over while she ate the same breakfast every day even when you bought new books? And how you had to stock pile that cereal because if there wasn’t any, she wouldn’t eat anything because that cereal was breakfast and afternoon tea and sometimes dinner." 😂
My assessment involved a couple of hours of talking to my folks and my dad finally reading the end report just said “how did we miss this” 😢
it needs to be given to those people as an anonymous poll
You know exactly why this is a stupid, impractical idea. Yes, that’s “better”. The question in the OP is being filtered not only through what others actively say to you but also the extent to which you weigh those remarks. I understand that. Everyone here understands that.
No neuropsychologist is going to be anonymously polling a representative sample of people you interact with. At best they’ll get a couple family members/caretakers (sometimes a teacher if the person is still in e.g. elementary school) to describe how you present to them. The purpose of questions like this isn’t to hinge your entire diagnosis upon them; it’s to get a bunch of data points and see how they cluster. It doesn’t, therefore, have to be nearly as ridiculously strict as you’re suggesting.
Here’s the autism-spectrum quotient if you’re curious what a real self-response questionnaire looks like. As an example of this style of question: “Other people frequently tell me that what I’ve said is impolite, even though I think it is polite.”
My point isn’t that an anonymous poll is a good idea, but that expecting autists to accurately report on the (potentially secret) feelings of other people isn’t practical either. It’s like how they make you jump through a bunch of beurocratic hoops to get ADHD assessments. The test itself is filtering against positive identification in a number of cases.
Just to clarify: the AQ isn’t a test for determining on its own that someone is or isn’t autistic. It’s (potentially) one part of a larger assessment.
For ADHD, the ADHD-RS-5 is the most popular structured questionnaire I know of, but much of ADHD screening is less about questionnaires and more about cognitive testing and interviews like DIVA-5.
I think that’s the appropriate answer
Yeah, it is. A major part of an autism diagnosis is how others perceive you. For example, as a neurodevelopmental disorder, bringing in people who knew you as a child to describe how you behaved is heavily emphasized in adult diagnoses. If they wanted to know what you think of yourself, they would’ve asked that.
But they didn’t ask how people perceive you.
They asked what people tell you about their perception of you.
How it is stated is best.
If you ask what other people think of you, well now you are right back to what you guess other people think of you. Which may be more projecting your own thoughts than them.
Unless testing for paranoia, you need to keep it concrete as you can.
The being too literal is so severe that others will absolutely tell you. Your internal thought process recognizing both the intended figurative meaning whole also considering the literal is fine.
Maybe it should be more about falling to recognize figurative communication rather than ability to consider the literal meaning of communication.
Well, yes, because there’s imperfect data. I said that others’ perception of you is important, and the extent to which they remark on that is a proxy. Do I really need to explain the concept that you can’t read minds or (practicably) gather a representative sample of people in your life into a neuropsychologist’s office and thus what people tell you is the closest proxy?
For a post about taking things too literally instead of putting words in someone else’s mouth, you’re ironically putting words in my mouth instead of taking what I’m saying literally.
I didn’t sense any hostility in OP’s reply. It sounds like they’re referring to the test, stating its own directions. They’re not making any claims about it, or expressing a lack of understanding, let alone putting words in anyone’s mouth?
You’re right, witnesses to our childhood are important for adult diagnoses. The issue OP’s referring to isn’t whether or not others’ perceptions should be part of the picture, but rather that the wording of many autism tests (such as the one in the post) ask a question that depends on you recalling what others have perceived about you. The test I took didn’t use “say,” instead some questions expected me to somehow know what others think about me. These sorts of questions are kind of twisted to ask an autistic person, since it requires a recursive practice of the social skills we famously struggle with.
Bringing in people from childhood would be far more sensible. However, many of those seeking a diagnosis aren’t going to be brought down that route, as the first thing we’re given is this type of questionnaire. After that, the psych interviews us. I can’t speak for all, but for me that’s all I was given.
People tend to not be super honest about your perceived negative qualities because it’s considered impolite. If the doctor or whoever wants to know what people around me think of me, it needs to be given to those people as an anonymous poll.
e: This kind of question also assumes I interact with anyone to the degree that they have any idea what I’m like.
People also tend not to be very observant or, especially with parents, they have thrown their head in the sand. “No no you are/were a totally normal child”.
That was my parents. “Weird” or “not normal” was bad so the reassurance was always that I was normal. Meanwhile my sister: yeah but remember how she used to watch that one DVD every single day for a year? And she read the same 5 books over and over while she ate the same breakfast every day even when you bought new books? And how you had to stock pile that cereal because if there wasn’t any, she wouldn’t eat anything because that cereal was breakfast and afternoon tea and sometimes dinner." 😂
My assessment involved a couple of hours of talking to my folks and my dad finally reading the end report just said “how did we miss this” 😢
You know exactly why this is a stupid, impractical idea. Yes, that’s “better”. The question in the OP is being filtered not only through what others actively say to you but also the extent to which you weigh those remarks. I understand that. Everyone here understands that.
No neuropsychologist is going to be anonymously polling a representative sample of people you interact with. At best they’ll get a couple family members/caretakers (sometimes a teacher if the person is still in e.g. elementary school) to describe how you present to them. The purpose of questions like this isn’t to hinge your entire diagnosis upon them; it’s to get a bunch of data points and see how they cluster. It doesn’t, therefore, have to be nearly as ridiculously strict as you’re suggesting.
Here’s the autism-spectrum quotient if you’re curious what a real self-response questionnaire looks like. As an example of this style of question: “Other people frequently tell me that what I’ve said is impolite, even though I think it is polite.”
My point isn’t that an anonymous poll is a good idea, but that expecting autists to accurately report on the (potentially secret) feelings of other people isn’t practical either. It’s like how they make you jump through a bunch of beurocratic hoops to get ADHD assessments. The test itself is filtering against positive identification in a number of cases.
is there a test like this for adhd ?
Just to clarify: the AQ isn’t a test for determining on its own that someone is or isn’t autistic. It’s (potentially) one part of a larger assessment.
For ADHD, the ADHD-RS-5 is the most popular structured questionnaire I know of, but much of ADHD screening is less about questionnaires and more about cognitive testing and interviews like DIVA-5.
So if no one interacted with you because you’re weird, you’re not autistic, got it
Or if only people that could tolerate your your literalness because they themselves were at the same level interacted with you, you’re not autistic
(I understand that it’s just one question of many, but yes, it definitely doesn’t need to be an indicator of excessive literalness)