also the literal question was so hard for me to answer because of the "always" qualifier as even if there is one time that someone is not literal then it would be completely false that they are "always literal". to make it harder "never true" being one of the answers just adds another qualifier that is a struggle to answer
That was my exact experience. In general, these tests have so much ambiguity in their wording that I kept get results just below the cut off for diagnosis. Eventually though, it sort of clicked for me. I think I ended up thinking of the questions through the lens of "what would a neurotypical think this means" rather than what was ACTUALLY worded to ask. It seems obvious in hindsight, but I guess I thought stuff like this would be carefully worded. Fuck me, I guess?
having questions about the questions is very relatable haha. I must have really annoyed the person assessing me back then. they told me I could write notes, so I gave them pages worth explaining every single answer, and all the possible ways I could have interpreted each one and which interpretation I used when giving my answer.
Haha. In my ADHD eval, I had a ton of questions about the context of the questions because SO MANY were ambiguous in my mind! In the results, she said she rated me as "moderate" rather than severe because of inconsistencies in my answers. THAT'S BECAUSE THEY WERE WRITTEN POORLY!
YES! 🙌 🧡 It's so weird to me that these assessments don't actually want the extra; they don't provide any extra guidance or examples. Just tick the damn boxes! LOL.
@@Autistic_AFI'm hanging on with the hope that before too long there will be a new set of questionnaires made by ND folks with questions written in a more "ND-esque" manner. Not only would it be more suited to ascertain accurate answers from autistics, it would probably also do a good job of filtering out NT people who wouldn't care to fill out a set of nuanced questions looking for thoroughly thought-through and comprehensive responses.
I had an essay on the questionair and an essay with all the stuff I noticed/been told related to the dsm criteria from my selfdiagnosis time. Now officials diagnosed
5:50 I inherited my mom's language skills, was talking before 12 months, and have had a tendency to absolutely inhale any reading material set before me since I learned to read. I can process idiomatic language with no problem. My autistic over-literalness tends to consist of not sufficiently considering the possibility that someone may be lying, and in an extraordinarily dry sense of humor that involves a lot of responding to other people's jokes with an elaboration in the idea delivered completely deadpan.
Highly relatable, both crazy language acquisition, the literal-ness and humour. Does this or that idiom make sense to me? Of course not in a sense that it’s nonsense unless you know it’s an idiom, but that’s the case for all people, no…? And I know what an idiom is and know meanings of a lot of them. But realising that someone may be sarcastic or lying or speaking half truths is way harder. Replying to other people’s joke with being completely serious is hilarious in my opinion and I also do that 😂
Thanks, Mike! I was impressed how quickly you interpreted and answered the questions. For me, it would take so much longer to work out what all the neurotypical-speak meant. I found it amusing that the question about "putting yourself in other people's shoes" (an idiom) was followed by a question about having problems with idioms 🤣. Seriously though, it is so important for these questionnaires to be edited by actually Autistic people. There is so much assumed NT context that Autistic folks just don't necessarily share.
I caught that, too! Why the heck would you use an idiom in a test designed for people who may have trouble with idioms outside of specifically testing for trouble with idioms! These tests REALLY need overhauled by actual autists, I strongly concur! 👍
“Forced to play by other people’s rules” a very good description. Feeling an imposed one-sided set of assumptions on their part suddenly imposed on you without warning with no way out of it.
I took the RAADS-R cause a couple of my friends were taking on a school trip. It took me a few hours because i had so many questions (and we were running around doing things). Long story short, i scored 193 (15, 87, 51, 40 for each category in order) and started looking into Autism. Tens of hours of research, writing a 12 page research paper about autistic communication for fun (not including the cover page or citations), and subscribing to a few late diagnosed autistic youtubers later: I’m pretty sure I’m autistic and I feel comforted that who I am and why I am certain ways has an explantation and that I’m not just ‘weird’.
I scored 165. Language 13, Social relatedness 76, Sensory Motor 42, Circumscribed interests 34. After taking this test about 3 years ago, at a friend's suggestion, I started researching autism and found myself thinking "oh, I'm not the only one who does that!", "oh, there's a term for the way I think about this!", "I'm not just weird, I'm different like Quinn and Meg and Mike, and I'm not alone!" It's put a new perspective on my life.
The idiom questions don't make sense if you are not a native english speaker. Where I'm from we use a lot of idioms and nearly everyone learns english, so you just get a list of idioms, what they mean, and then the idioms in english. So you don't have to guess their meaning from context, you just get a list to memorize.
It’s unfortunate that so much internet stuff, just in general, is so “native-born American probably white” normative. We aren’t the only people who exist in the world! In fact, we are only a tiny percent! But we have the most money, so… 🫤 Edit: typo. I sincerely wish autocorrect would stop adding letter and even whole words I never typed to my typing… 😑
I thought the same. English is not my first language.. we have idioms in german too, but I cant remember what I thought when I heard them the first time @.@
I did take this test a while back, and I won't ever again. I remember having so much difficulty just understanding each question. This test literally took me over an hour because I was second-guessing everything 😭 I also find besides the fact it's questions are very outdated in some ways and seem to go along with the usual "autism stereotypes", it also completely dismisses and takes out of consideration people who have adhd and autism (which we know is very common).
I am also late diagnosed. I took this quiz as a starting place. It did not screen me as being autistic. It took years for me to find out that highly masking autistic women often do not screen for autism on these online quizzes. I won't go into the rabbit hole that led me to becoming convinced I am autistic, but I became convinced I am by researching autism in women, watching vids put out by autistic people. I contacted an organization that helps people with developmental conditions and they selected a neuropsychiatrist that specializes in identifying missed autistic adults. Highly masking women often get missed even when we go in for evaluation. I feel lucky that I got the doctor that screened me because she was well educated in spotting women with autism. I just wanted to point out that you can be almost normal socially, I can hold conversations, I enjoy small talk, I would be described as a social leader, I have been known as the person that throws parties, etc. I love people. But the older I get the harder it has been for me to be social, the more exhausting it is for me to perform social tasks, the more avoidant I become of public places. I am writing this comment because other women might see this vid and screen themselves out based on these quizzes. They weren't designed to screen us. They were designed to miss us. Autistic women are often socially motivated, able to have long term friendships. I DO have some forms of social dysfunction, but they would not be what you'd expect. I am too empathetic at times. But my biggest social deficit is because there is one emotion I do not feel that others do. I have no capacity for jealousy. I know what it is to feel envy, but I jealousy is a foreign emotion. I do not feel angry at people because I envy them. I never knew that jealousy is a huge motivator for many people. This one little blind spot caused by autistic alexithymia has been a huge problem for me. I feel most emotions in a neurotypical way, I have both cognitive and emotional empathy for every other emotion but that one. And because I don't feel it i don't see it in others, until it is too late. And that wouldn't normally be a problem except I am a perfectionist that a lot of people have been jealous of. I just wanted to say, if you are a woman, and you sometimes don't understand why someone is mad at you, or what you did to make someone dislike you, you might be autistic.
When I was re-evaluated last year, the psychologist didn't think that these tests have any validity, which should have been my first clue that I wasn't going to get a proper evaluation.
@@karenholmes6565 hello, this is interesting. I’m 31 and throughout my life I have not understood jealousy. I keep asking my mum, “is that a jealousy thing?” She says of course, like I understand what that implies but I still don’t really get it. People can be very cruel to me throughout my life, including my sister and I think it might be motivated by jealousy. As I’ve always been good at things, like exams and sport. I’m glad it’s not just me. Would have helped to be taught what jealousy means in life as a child. I am hyper empathetic and I dislike the empathy questions. Differences in empathy either way can cause social issues. I’ve never really understood human motivation in terms of putting each other down and trying to hurt others to make you feel better. Or even revenge, I don’t feel it very strongly, if at all. As so many people are cruel to me, I would be completely alone if I took revenge on people who hurt me. I don’t enjoy hurting people, even if they have hurt me. If it gets too much, I will end a relationship. Most people hurt me I think because they are jealous or enjoy seeing someone else suffer. Because I’m a nice person, pleasing to look at, funny, caring. I seem to have traits that would not encourage abuse but here we are. Perhaps it’s because I don’t respond in the way people predict or want. Luckily on the whole I now have really lovely people in my life who are good to me. Hope you have the same.
@@topsyturvygirlI was in my early 50s when I finally understood exactly how deeply people can feel jealousy. My sister was deeply jealous of me for our entire life. I didn't get just how deeply she felt that until our mom was terminally ill in the hospital. She said to me that when I was born I took her parents away from her. That is how she acted towards me at the worst moment of my life. I realized I never understood exactly why she had been so hostile and passive aggressive towards me. I knew she thought I was prettier than she was. Like you, I was very attractive when I was younger. I was a scholar as well. I went to college on scholarships, etc. I was selected to lead clubs and groups in school. I have been the target of undermining and backstabbing because some people can't stand it when they think someone else is better than they are, because normies think in hierarchy
@topsyturvygirl - your comment and the original one could have been written by me! It never occurred to me until now that my lack of understanding of jealousy and lack of desire for revenge could ever be explained or that I would find others who felt the same. I feel so seen. Thank you. I'm not professionally diagnosed with autism but do have an ADHD Dx. At 63, realizing how others' jealousy has played a role in destroying my self esteem over the years. If I had read things as jealousy instead of internalizing the negativity, I would have made very different choices in life. And a hearty YES to there being a huge difference between envy (which I feel) and jealousy (which I don't)!
#3. Am I surprised when people tell me I'm rude? Am I surprised when the sun rises in the east, am I surprised that the tide comes in and goes out, or that dogs bark? No, not at all. I've come to expect such mundane things. I am surprised that they could have found what I said to be rude, rather than honest and thoughtful, but the fact that they say it was rude is only part of the fundamental warp and weft of nature. #7. It means they are the cat's pajamas and the bee's knees. Next question. #10. I have to choose just one? Both texture and flavor are critical. Mushy food, bland food, sour food, food that has no identity. Chunky soups are intolerable. I can't eat them and I can't drink them. They need to decide what they want to be! #16. Always true. I can only imagine being me. That's why I like fantasy stories. I love watching people being incomprehensible in fantastic settings. #24. Define 'highly'. Am I supposed to be rating this on a scale? I can give an answer in absolute terms, but I can't give a relative rating without knowing what scale you're using. #27. They say I'm a smart aleck because I answer the question they ask, rather than the question they mean. I used that in the novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo this year. They say the main female lead answers questions like that, so you have to be extremely precise with questions. I never use the word autistic, but I'll be very disappointed if no one recognizes themselves in her. #33. Again, define 'normal'. I have no idea what rhythms are normal or not. #35. Edgar, from Men In Black. #59. I have no idea where that bruise came from. I went through ordeals where they prescribed Percocet because it was going to be extremely painful and I needed to be ready for it. Root canal, shattered shoulder joint, kidney stone surgery. Once the anesthetic wore off, never more than a dull ache. #75. I always had a map in my pocket. I picked them up free at the service station, where people filled their cars. I love paper maps. Total Score: 207, but it changes depending on how I interpret the question on a particular day. I think my lowest score was 180 or so. And these questions should really be written by autistic people. We'll call it the RAADS-AQ (autistic questions) test.
I would add for anyone looking into self identification: One of the criteria for an autism diagnosis is that the traits of autism have to cause significant detriment to your life. This is effectively the difference between having autistic traits and having autism. I also recognise that most people who are looking into whether they may be autistic generally do so when something is causing detriment to their lives.
I don't think it's something people have, it's something people are. If you remove my limbs I would still be me. If you rewired my brain to make it neurotypical, the mind inhabiting that brain would not be me. I think "it causes significant detriment" would be criteria for a diagnosis of a disorder. But there are plenty of us out there who are autistic and not disordered. There needs to be a way to describe that, that we as a community can settle on, and which doesn't encourage gatekeeping.
Yes, and I think one way to define this is to recognize the “unfulfilled potential” that has other people wondering why someone so “smart” has not achieved much or followed a career path. Despite academic achievement, I always felt I just didn’t understand or know what options were available and how to pursue them. At the same time, I’m missing a lot of little, everyday skills. I really depend on my partner to step in and take care of a lot of things. (cue the feelings of inadequacy and shame)
I have never received comments about that actually, so I don't understand how you can answer a question about something which does not exist. "No" is not valid because it could be that people think you are odd but they just don't voice it out loud.
@@Kamishi845This was my biggest gripe throughout the process! It’s generally considered rude to say negative things about someone to their face, no matter how much you think it in your head, and I don’t know precisely what negative things people are thinking about me unless they TELL ME!!! So I had to carefully sift through a lifetime of painful memories to dig out the nuggets of “You really need to make more eye contact.”, “You need to control your facial expressions; rolling your eyes is extremely rude!”, “I said the patient had a serious infection and she CHUCKLED!”, and “You made her cry when you talked about her job like it was easy (as in, maybe something I could do; that’s happened to me twice)!”. 😥
DUDE! Thank you for that comment on the crowds. I often think "I am fine speaking to crowds/teaching/etc." But I am completely bumbling and erratic in a "group" where people are conversing.
I intend to go back to lectoring (that’s “reading” for the non-Catholics!) at church soon, because I want to support my church and am comfortable in front of a group. Yes, that is extremely different from, say, sitting around the Thanksgiving table chatting! 😬
I scored 130 a few months ago when finally after 50 years that a person diagnosed with Autism and ADHD which children that are also diagnosed, told me that I obviously have autism and ADHD. Language subtotal - 6 Social relatedness subtotal - 85 Sensory/motor subtotal - 13 Circumscribed interests subtotal - 26 I would say I mask a lot and I’ve been told that I am highly intelligent so I presume that enables me to adapt. Procrastinated until I had another burnout at work - finally saw the doctor and he agreed to refer me for autism and ADHD assessment. Off work at the moment, I’m finding much harder that I’m older coping with work. I think I was more resilient (hate that word) when I was younger. I found these questions very difficult as I take them literally and over analyse them. And felt that many of them I just could not answer at all as they don’t apply or not logical.
I took it twice with my wife this year, and it was pretty indicative. I received a 189, and she a 45. I trade stock, so I don’t need a diagnosis, but it was refreshing to learn this is why I am as I am. What’s also interesting is, after learning this, it’s now surprisingly easy to spot others with ASD. It’s like having a built in autism detector, and I’m sure others are the same.
Everybody that I've clocked as autistic that has subsequently been evaluated has received a diagnosis. I was over at a family friend's house this evening and spent a while playing a game with one of their kids (diagnosed) and a child of their other guests (undiagnosed). Between the three of us, hardly any eye contact was exchanged, and both of the kids were stimming vigorously.
@@JonBrase Isn't that funny how it works? It's really like a built in radar. I've found it even extends to movies/shows. I was watching a Hallmark murder mystery show (Mistletoe Murders) with my wife recently, and I told her it had to have been written by someone autistic based on the content. Sure enough, it is. Again, we seem to have a built-in radar.
Every time I take a version of this, I find myself randomly picking between "true only now" and "true only when I was young" whenever something's always been PARTIALLY true or the answer Depends On How You Define It. If there was an actual neutral choice, or an "I don't know", I'd be happy! However, I do find it _otherwise_ accurate at telling me I am autistic. :P This time RAADZ-R said I have 160, "Very strong evidence for autism"! (Commenting before watching, so sorry if you mentioned everything I said ^^')
On Idioms, in my assessment they asked me what I see in my imagination when someone says “it’s raining cats and dogs”. Do you imagine it raining hard or cats and dogs falling from the sky? Apparently allistic people without aphantasia imagine it raining heavily. I imagine cats and dogs falling from the sky. Similarly with “got you under my skin”. The reason it’s ick is because my brain gives me a literal image of someone moving under my skin like in Alien. Many metaphorical song lyrics are like this.
@@harrietwindebank6051 this reminds me of the first time I heard the idiom "throwing out the baby with the bathwater" lol, I was so shocked and had to look up what it was supposed to mean
Thanks for this Mike. Knowing the true prevalence of autism is the key to supporting it and us. As a 60 year old with a medical diagnosis, I'm 1:18,000 supposedly. It's a shocking figure that reflects massive underdiagnosis - not an increase in actual prevalence. We need to encourage everyone to get screened - especially older adults like me. Until childhood rates match geriatric rates, there will be a lost autistic cohort. As difficult and tragic as my life has been, my diagnosis gave it meaning. That changed everything. It's been a challenging journey, but I'm finding my footing, and living my best possible life. My Autism is a blessing.
25:00 - wanting to do the things the same day after day. I had a hard time with this one as well. My ADHD craves novelty, but for instance, when I was travelling this summer, I had my regular coffee place, and my regular lunch place, amd the place I liked to meet up with friends for drinks. And I had to think twice when asked to go to a different place. Id usually go, but if I were tired, for instance, I'd be less likely to go to a new place. I've always answered that "never" true, but now I'm thinking I should answer it differently.
I have been researching autism for several months now, and I keep wondering if I am assessing myself correctly.This video is very useful because I found a big test that doesn't consist of questions like "do you have problems with looking someone in the eye?" and I was also able to see how another person interprets the question, which is important for me! For example, I noticed that I really like numbers and statistics, like calculating the percentage of work done today, just for fun, but I never thought that this was an autistic trait. I got 101 points on the test(9, 37, 31, 24), I can't be sure if I'm actually autistic until I get an official diagnosis, but I guess today I got confirmation that I actually have a lot of autistic traits
Question five seems to assume that if you haven't changed by 16, you haven't changed at all. As someone who started feeling comfortable and fluent in social situations at around age 25, I don't really know what to answer. I guess that's why it's good to take this test while you have someone you can ask.
'You used to buy road maps when driving'...for my last birthday, I received a road atlas and I *love* it! My last atlas was for 2016 so it was time for a revised edition.
Ace! I used to enjoy 'navigating' from the back of the car with one of these atlases! I actually recently found an old OS map from the 1800s; which is fantastic to compare to the modern day versions.
@@Autistic_AF Google Scottish national library ordnance survey,they have electronic historic maps for across the whole of the UK right back to the 1800s. Choose the area and it'll show what maps they have. I used to (still do) just read maps and atlases. Even for places I've never been to
Specifically, I hate how the only mentions of texture sensitivities end with "this is MORE important than how it tastes/looks" when to me they typically matter EQUALLY! I don't eat things I don't like the taste of if I like the texture. I don't wear things I find ugly just because they're comfortable (Even if "ugly but comfortable" is how _others_ would describe my outfit...) I think having the same set of answers for each question, with no "maybe", is a hinderance. Those questions need a "first half true, second half not" answer for me to tell the truth! Also the hyperempathy erasure, with "no" to the empathy questions raising your score, bothers me a heck of a lot but that's typical
That would be my answer for the food. I can't stand bitter or sour foods that other people love. But the texture is also vital. I can't choose one or the other.
I won't wear something I consider ugly either, but I also put that under the sensory category. My decisions are based on what makes my eyes happy, not on what is in style. It is about how it looks to me. I do make sure it isn't something that may be offensive and consider other people's perspective, but the goal is that I like it.
@@RuiNa42After 13 years of mostly acting “en loco parentis” to other people’s very vulnerable children (either very young or disabled), my wardrobe consists primarily of elastic waist jeans and G-rated t-shirts! I’m comfortable AND they’re comfortable! 🤣
5:16 The question about ‘putting myself in other people’s shoes’ launched a really interesting reflection in me: - No one’s shoes are so big that I could put my whole self in them - No one’s shoes are so small that I can’t put part of myself into them - Obviously this is true literally but it’s also true of me metaphorically - When I put part of myself in other people’s shoes it’s normally because I’m putting my hand in my kids’ shoes to look for stones etc - So even when part of me is in another’s shoes it’s not the equivalent part of my body, but rather my hand groping around to get a sense of their experience - And that’s how I generally empathise with others: I reconstruct through intellectually fumbling around to gauge the basic dimensions of someone else’s experience. I never realised that metaphor could have so much in it!
Definitely have a lot of questions about the questions. I find myself wishing there were other answers that make more sense to me than the ones they give. But you do your best with it, trying to be as honest (with yourself) as possible. For me it came out to 163. It really does take some serious thought to consider (also remember!) your experiences, recognizing especially a lot of things you short-circuited yourself from doing (or even admitting you were feeling) in life, especially childhood, because you were scolded and/or embarrassed out of it.
I took the other test, scored a 40. But I remember, as I took it, saying, yes when I was younger/a kid. I've learned to mask a LOT of stuff and adapted to fit in. This test, sounds the way the questions should be asked. thanks for that!
My experience as well prior to getting my diagnosis. I used to think a lot of things come naturally to me, but I have realized how draining those situations often are - meaning they are a result of masking. If the test answer doesnt sit quite well with you, I suggest you take some of the other tests. The Embrace Autism website is a gold mine for loads of tests along with discussions of their pros and cons. Also, i recommend coming back to the tests in a few weeks' or months' time. Taking the tests multiple times helped me make sense of them and get accurate answers
I have done all the online tests. The Aspie Quiz is easiest to understand. RAADS was what my psychologist led me to do and I was even more confused than you!
Yes! This was the test that, after all the little online quizzlets were like 🤷♀️ and made me think I probably wasn’t autistic enough to be autistic, told me I was more autistic than the average autistic, which made me carefully reconsider my position! 😳 11) I always prided myself on not getting homesick; I don’t automatically reach out to others for support when upset. Part of this is because my parents were the precise OPPOSITE of emotionally supportive, and I now understand that this isn’t actually a good sign, but this may be what they are getting at; I answered D on this one. 26) The Christmas and New Year parties are going horribly when I can’t outright avoid them, thank you for asking! 🫠 People who suspect they may do a lot of “acting” to survive, more likely those AFAB, should definitely consider taking the CAT-Q if they score equivocally on the RAADS-R; I myself actually don’t mask much, though. Too autistic! 😅
I identified myself to be AuDHD this year. As a highly masking woman with a special interest in languages, psychology, politics and social studies, I find it hard to answer questionnaires, because I often 1)know several answers, which sometimes can be opposite and lead to both yes and no, 2)have a version of myself for outside world (people usually read it as an excitement, even when it’s not) and a version for home->1st has tendency to be very open and engage in everything, 2nd is a complete loner spending most time at home with my computer, 3)because of p.2 I feel a need to “mask” into an autistic self and play along with a questionnaire using a scheme: 1)try to understand which autistic quality the question is referred to, 2)recall my own presentation of that quality, because it often is masked or differs from the example given, 3)answer rather about the quality, than to the exact question. With all of this taken into account I usually score in an “autistic range”, but pretty close to an “allistic” border. I assume that if I answered such a questionnaire ~5 years ago, I would not score autistic. At the same time, as I’m getting further in the process of unmasking, I assume over time I may score “more autistic”. I also think one of the big difficulties for me is recognizing my autistic traits, because for my whole life I’ve considered them to be standard and even never had a thought that other people are SO different from myself. E.g. I still have no idea on how to distinguish people by their qualities (what does it mean to have “high nose”, “moon-shaped face” or to be “smart”, “responsible”, “coward” etc. in real life), how it’s possible to make diminishing jokes about animals/people or how someone can become successful just for their social skill without actual knowledge of the topic. And many people I’ve seen are able to do all of these naturally.
Question 75 "When I go somewhere, I have to follow a familiar route or I can get very confused and upset" - like a lot of these questions, my answer reflects the fact that I have a work-around. Back before GPS enabled mobile phones I always had a map, and I applied myself to learning how to use it. When I started driving (which I did early, as it reflected a special interest), after once getting really hopelessly lost, I actually signed up to do a taxi licence - not because I wanted to drive taxis, but because the course would force me to learn and memorise key routes, places of interest etc. I also made sure always to have a street directory (for driving in the big city) and road atlas (for out of town). Going out bush, which I've always liked doing, I would have the 1:25,000 topo map - I have a whole suite of them - and compass, and I did orienteering to learn how to be good at using them. You also learn techniques in orienteering like aiming off, and the importance of using landforms and features as "handrails" or "catches" to help you to avoid becoming lost. Even now, with GPS, I'll sit down before going somewhere new and have a good look at what to expect: route, distance, time, stops, alternatives, and even then I'll have the GPS on in the car or while walking. So do I get confused and upset? No, because I have a System ;-)
This was really helpful! To watch you talk out loud about all the added notes you'd have and questions for clarification, made me feel less alone with how unclear or too one-sided these questions seemed to me. I've done the RAADS-R test twice. First time my score was actually pretty low, then someone said if the question says something like "always" or "never" and I would like to pick "sometimes agree and sometimes don't agree" then I should opt for "agree". So with that perspective I ended up with a much higher score. The comment section at embrace-autism shows that a couple of people are struggling with this 😅 And I also realized, when I just watched you comment on question 41. (I keep lists of things that interest me, even when they have no practical use (for example sports statistics, train schedules, calendar dates, historical facts and dates) saying "yeah not bags full of physical lists, but in digital form" that just enlightened me 🤣because this was yet another question I took too literal and checked "never". Yet I have a memento list of TV shows I've watched and update it whenever I've completed a new season for a show and also keep a list of movies watched on letterboxd. I guess you're totally right and digital lists are definitely a thing 🥲and therefore I shouldn't have answered "never" 😂
i scored a 196 language: 13 Social Relatedness: 84 Sensory/motor: 60 Circumscribed Interests: 39 glad i decided to keep the pdf of my results. RAADS-r was the thing that convinced me to start going down the road towards diagnosis, but i never would've known it existed had another autistic person on social media not sent me a DM asking me if i was autistic. answered so many previously unanswered questions about why i struggled in life. as an added bonus, i find it somewhat easier to be kinder to myself, because now i know that it's not because i'm a screw-up; i'm just different and the world isn't built to accommodate brains like mine still have a long journey ahead of me, but i'm hopeful it eventually leads me to a better place in life. or at the very least some peace of mind
Mike - I think you should answer 55 about group projects differently. BECAUSE you are the one to do the projects rather than doing them AS A GROUP. I've had the same experience except there's always a resentment that I'm stuck doing the lion's share (or all) of the work in order to get a good grade.
"Ever heard of black and white thinking?" -- I do love how autistic traits as described by neurotypicals include "rigid thinking", and a lot of the time I actually find neurotypical thinking rigid! The "literal thinking" was one part of the criteria that kept me from identifying as autistic for a very long time, because I... took it too literally. I teach languages and literature, I am great at understanding idioms, metaphors, analogies etc., so I didn't see how I could be seen as too literal. But thanks to content like yours, I realized that I've always struggled with weirdly phrased instructions and requests where there are implied expectations, and with small talk that conveys a different meaning than the words being said. You're right about "incorrectly imprecise"!
I got 181 🎉 very simmilar to your results 19, 77, 47, 38. I guess it would be higher if not for my masking and social anxiety, and if the questions were better worded. I find it funny because I made a mental map of my autistic traits and then found your video where you did the same, some family members don't belive my selfdiagnosis, so I had to tell them about that 😂 I am so happy that I am made this way, even with all the struggles, I question things and not just follow people blindly, which is very important in todays society with everything so normalized. I love the autistic community so much!!
I have so many questions about some of those questions lol. Most of the questions NEED clarification, they need context because so many of the questions refer to things that have different outcomes in different situations.
My trouble with that sort of test, is neither the questions nor the answers are ever quite nuanced enough. And they say "well, just pick the closest" Which is stressful AF, because choosing between pointedly inaccurate answers, which will lead to poor assumptions, which causes me no End of people not getting what I'm pointing at, which is the Bane of my fucking existence, sucks. I'm already translating odd, far reaching, deeply interconnected emotional sense images into "mostly, but not really, close enough language", but now I'm having to suss out the worldview of whoever decided on That loaded question, and these canned answers which are not My answer. My entire existence and interface with the world and everything, is deeply complicated context dependent. *sigh*
Thanks for going through the test with us, Mike. Interpreting some of the questions can be difficult. I scored a 175 the first time I took it, and now a 163 - 16/83/30/34.
One of the most surprising even shocking things to me was once I watched Judge Judy. I recall that she made her mind up over a persons guilt or innocence over their memory. She claimed that a persons memory gets worse over time not better. Stated this as a fact. I disagree. My memory oftentimes improves once I realise the meaning, sometimes decades later. Could this raise concerns of injustice through misunderstood accepted behavioural norms?
15:32 We seem to have a tendency to in some sense "think in paragraphs rather than sentences", so we end up with a couple sentences queued up in our heads faster than we can actually speak those sentences, but we may not have the next thought ready before we've completed those sentences, and then we end up stalling waiting for our brain to deliver the next few sentences. I find it's worse when I'm tired, in which case my speech centers have a tendency to bluescreen and reboot in the middle of a---- --- I'll speak English in a minute here ---- --- Loading, please wait --- --- Ummm --- --- Uhhhhh... --- --- What was I saying? --- --- Oh yes... in the middle of a sentence.
See now, I always took "heart on the sleeve" to mean very sensitive. Loves strongly and then gets hurt often. Because their heart is unprotected. So it is a good quality, but with a downside.
It’s been a couple years since I did this, so I decided to take it again along with you. 181, which is maybe 20 or so higher than the last time. I was masking more then, understand the context of the questions better now, recognize masked past experiences better now, etc. Basically more of the previous true only responses have been more accurately changed to true then and now.
My wife and I tested ourselves 2 years ago, both on spectrum, she's higher than me. Tested myself again more carefully 9 months ago. Total 171. Now, my wife says I am not autistic and invalidates me, leaving me feeling upset and depressed. How do I cope with this invalidation? I'm now really struggling with suicidal thoughts. I'm in my 60's and had always wondered what was wrong with me. Autism explains everything, wish I had known when I was young.
@@ThoughtfulAl - is your wife an expert in diagnosing adults with autism? If not, then ignore her gaslighting. Please reach out to a qualified counselor to talk about your suicidal thoughts. They will also help you determine how to address this concerning way she's treating you. You don't say where you're located, but if you feel you are in danger of harming yourself, please seek help immediately, whether from a hotline or by going to an Emergency Room or A&E. It also might help to get an official diagnosis. If your wife is frightened of an Autism diagnosis, she might be denying your self-evaluation because it means hers is invalid as well. I'm just spitballing one possibility here. Your feelings are valid and you are needed on this planet. You have community here.
Agree with all of above comment, would like to say that your wife may not be able to understand the nuances, depending upon her autism. But do get help.
Please contact your local crisis helpline; they’ll be able to help you directly - some of them work over text and WhatsApp which is great. www.helpguide.org/find-help
Took the test EDIT: Well, I scored a 230 on the test. Language: 21 Social: 107 Sensory: 60 Circuscribed Interests: 42 How did I survive so long on my own? Not well.
Thank you for taking this test and going question by question Mike. I tried taking this again and I get so frustrated with the black and white answers and I'm glad to see you struggling how to answer as much as I did. We have slightly different personalities but our scores were very close to the same. Maybe one day I'll get officially diagnosed (37 now).
Hi, Mike…in your intro, you said that there is no brain scan to tell if you’re autistic. I know that diagnosis is based on observed behaviors, but while I wasn’t officially diagnosed as being ASD until March of this year, I always took great comfort in the results of a brain mapping that was done by an internationally respected neurologist when I was seeking help for mental health issues back in the late 1990’s; because the results clearly showed that my brain is wired vastly different to the majority of the population. As I’ve done my own research and learned more about autism over the last two years, I thought the results of that brain mapping (though, the lack of understanding regarding masking and how autism presents in females with no comorbid intellectual deficit meant that no conclusions were drawn or diagnosis given at the time the brain mapping was done) showed the lack of synaptic pruning that is a key feature of autism. So, even though this medical test isn’t widely available, or used as current diagnostic criteria, isn’t it a “brain scan that can show autism”?
@SkeletalSculptor, thanks for sharing your experience! I’m glad you found comfort in the brain mapping results-it’s always validating to see tangible evidence that our brains may function differently. As you mentioned, the brain scan you had done showed something that aligns with the current understanding of autism, like atypical synaptic pruning perhaps or hemisphere connectivity differences? While these differences can certainly appear on certain types of brain imaging, they aren’t used as official diagnostic tools right now. Autism is still formally identified through behavioral assessments and developmental history. That’s partly because: 1. Variability: Autistic traits manifest differently among individuals, so there’s no single “brain signature” that applies to all autistic people. 2. Early Clinical Focus: Professionals rely on developmental observations (often from childhood) and how those traits affect day-to-day functioning. 3. Limited Accessibility: Specialised brain imaging techniques, like the one you had in the ‘90s, aren’t widely available, and insurance (US) doesn’t usually cover them for autism diagnosis. That said, as research progresses, it’s totally possible that more precise neuroimaging or genetic screening could complement the diagnostic process in the future. But for the moment, official clinical criteria lean on interviews, questionnaires, and direct observation. I love that you brought this up, because it underscores how autism isn’t “just in our heads”; there are biological underpinnings-some that can show up in detailed scans. It’s not that the scans are meaningless-they just aren’t yet considered a consistent enough diagnostic tool across the board. Thanks again for watching and commenting-I really appreciate you sharing your story ☺️ Take care, Mike 🧡
@@Autistic_AF gotta say I don't like this use of AI text - posted under your own name as if it were your own words. It feels dishonest to me. I don't know if that's just me tho
It would be interesting to see if there are any autism traits that can be mapped to particular features of brain scans. There's Autistic you tuber I follow called "I am Mindblind", who also has Aphantasia - the inability to see images in her mind and SDAM - inability to record Autobiagraphical memories. I don't know if she's done a brain scan, but recently I listened to a podcast talking about spectrum between Aphantasia, and Hyperphantasia - people who can see images in their mind as if they were real. They believe people with hyperphatasia have more connections between the frontal lobe and the visual cortex enabling them to manipulate images more easily in their minds. Where as people with Aphantasia may have weaker links. Temple Grandin talks about her brainscan in her book about Visual Thinking. She has more connections than normal between her frontal lob and visual cortext and she has very strong visual abilities supporting that idea .
31:33 I only started driving in 2016 (2 months after turning 17 as driving is a special interest) and I bought a paper map of Northern Ireland (where I live) for my car. I have used it once so far when the usual route home was closed due to a serious RTC. It was only a matter of driving for a couple of miles, making one turn, then popping back onto the road I know, but still, I'm that scared of getting lost I couldn't go more than a few hundred metres down that unfamiliar road without checking. I have to do trial runs to places I don't know in the days before actually going as well, and that's after a lot of google maps (other brands available) planning. I do use my phone for navigating, but I only connect to the WiFi at home so am dependent on offline maps/routes I've downloaded before setting off. Yeah. I don't know when to stop. I only wanted to say I got a paper map despite them seeming like ancient artifacts. :) OK, in expanding to answer question 75 from simply wanting to talk about my paper road map, I also answered no.78. :)
Total:166 Language subtotal:16, Social relatedness subtotal:70, Sensory/motor subtotal:47, Circumscribed interests subtotal:33 Question 75 made me chuckle to myself. When I go somewhere, I have to follow a familiar route or I can get very confused and upset. I've always been interested in globes, maps, exploring, walking, biking, compass and star navigation as far back as I can remember... Also taste. I like extreme tastes. I chew and suck the insides of my cheeks and hands/fingers, grind my teeth when I am a wake or asleep. I also use to chew all my tshirts. Saying this, I pretty much eat the same breakfast and lunch everyday. I have about 4 different variations of dinner
Mine is 194, and I'm what I call soft diagnosed, meaning two health professionals are fairly certain. But I haven't gone through the full barrage diagnosis and I'm still trying to decide if I should. 4 years of burn out suggests maybe?
I persevered despite the binary nature of the questions (which means you have to basically lie by saying never or always) and got 151, close to the mean score for autists. However, I only got 4 on language. This fits with my self-assessment: one reason I doubted that I could be autistic was my communication skill, and I still think it might prevent me getting a formal diagnosis. It's a special interest - I have developed my own language with non-European grammar and script...
I loved how you rationalized this, I said never true to many questions that I see differently now. Nevertheless, last time I checked, my score was 149. 😅😂
12:02 ‐ getting "highly confused" when interrupted. I'm troubled by the phrase "highly confused." No. I don't get "confused." But I often get "highly irritated" or "highly frustrated. " So I've always answered this "never". Should I be answering this differently? Thoughts? Edit: if it's a complex problem I've put a lot of thought into, and am "in the zone" to solve it, I can have trouble getting back into the "groove" if interrupted, but it's STILL not confusing!
I often feel like I'm holding my breath if I get interrupted. Sometimes I discover I am ACTUALLY holding my breath, unconsciously! I remember what I was going to say and feel frustrated to not get there.
I scored 201. I quit a job soon after a boss told me I was disrespectful and even asked me if I was doing my job. I did not yet know that I was autistic. The part of the experience that was the most baffling, was that they wanted me to keep working and kept reprimanding me for not simply getting over it and coming back to work. I had a doctor’s note excusing me. Because of how it all happened, I quit right before the end of the mouth and therefore lost my health insurance immediately. The way I experienced it, I was bullied out, but I think they saw it as a genuinely warranted and helpful reprimand. It could have been as simple as going over situations to clarify things, but they chose to jump to conclusions about my character that were not true and deeply hurtful. They were quite overwhelmed with the work load I handed back to them. They should have considered actual evidence of my work and character before making such nasty allegations. Just because we are different, doesn’t mean we aren’t doing our job.
4:35 I didn't learn "children should be seen and not heard" from adults, I learned it from my peers. Well, really it was more "Jon should be seen and not heard", my peers were fine with being heard.
Questions, lol. Having lots of questions. I once had a tutor tell me (prior to diagnosis) that I was a divergent thinker and that we're difficult to teach, because we ask too many questions. I think it boils down to us not actually being slow learners, but deep learners. This means we do take longer but we need to know the whole subject for it to make sense, we end up being able to lecture on it. The adhd psychiatrist I had was literally pulling his hair out, constantly reminding of how much we needed to get through and the time limit, he only does adhd and had been doing it decades, I felt I was a real challenge for him, lol.
It appears that this questionnaire is posing its questions in such a way that it is believed actually autistic people would be utterly incapable of answering! So many of these questions are about how other people perceive us. We're supposed to be rubbish at knowing what other people think. Indeed, how is anybody supposed to know these things? It's an annoying test. As it turns out - I'm not that bad at reading the faces and body language of others and I'm sometimes told I see things that nobody else has. However, knowing how I am perceived is complete conjecture. Usually, unless somebody is trying to pretend they think of me a certain way but they're not very good at it.
NT's also don't know how they are perceived. The difference is that they are perfectly fine with intuiting an answer (right or wrong) and believing it without question.
Would it not be even more rude to tell someone they are rude? Nobody around me would ever do that. They kind of show it by disaproving looks, but would never say something.
While learning is a drug to me, I feel like all this is failing to teach me anything. No matter how well I learn to understand myself, it does not teach me to be a better person on the outside, it just point out that I'm always going to depend on the kindness of others and I'm not sure they are all that kind, since kindness mostly come at the cost of efficiency.
Helen, I do not call this overthinking. You are probably doing the appropriate amount of thinking for incredibly ambiguous questions. The NTs who write these tests have a very imprecise use of language, which is a shame because I presume they would like to design an accurate test.
Honestly, I'm not surprised. 45 years old hispanic male here. Total: 185 Language subtotal: 13 Social relatedness subtotal: 92 Sensory/motor subtotal: 44 Circumscribed interests subtotal: 36
I got 112. Less than most people here, less than the average autistic person, but stll higher than the highest neurotypical person from the original study. I feel validated but not surprised.
I scored 187. I'm late undiagnosed. For fairness, I paused the video and did the test before watching, to avoid being influenced by your answers. Some of the questions were difficult as you mentioned, asking how other people see you, assumes possibly several people would have been forward enough to tell you honestly, or questions that seem to imply an extreme effect that I probably wouldn't have gone as far as if describing the degree of effect myself, so would that make it a 'Never True', I'm not sure, when it's true but to a lesser extent than suggested. The question "I am an understanding type of person" with such black and white options is quite bizarre. How do I gauge if I'm understanding or not in general? I've done a number of variations on these kinds of online autism test going back about 15 years, and have always scored as 'Very Likely' on them. I should probably get a proper assessment for confirmation, but my life/work circumstances have made it possible to self-accommodate and have effectively zero support needs for the time being, so there hasn't been the impetus to go formal. Having zero support needs may mean I don't meet the criteria for a positive diagnosis anyway, though I'm not sure how that works because the variable luck of anyone's current circumstances doesn't change their fundamental brain wiring. Under different circumstances that I can imagine, I would definitely have a lot more difficulty.
I scored 186. I don't know if this score might have changed if I had selected "True Only Now" instead of "True now and when I was younger" for all of the ones that were true for me now. I don't remember much before adulthood. High school is a blur, and before that is basically only knowing if something happened but not actually remembering it. But, since I don't remember my childhood really at all, I can't honestly say if it is true only now or also when I was younger. That's the thing I dislike most about this test, though that's very specific to me-- I feel like I am lying no matter what I do, because I can't confirm the truth of either of those answers. But the ambiguity and broadness of most of the questions is also up there on the list of dislikes.
I find that I actually parse the phrasing of the question so much that it's hard for me to answer, such as question 8: "I only like to talk to people that share my special interest". I might like to talk to other people, but I might get bored easily...so it's the phrasing that gets me.
I scored 116, but actually my "social relatedness score" was only borderline (33, where the threshold is 31). I've always been a very social person - though admittedly when I was young, I didn't always realize when I was acting inappropriately. I think there's a stereotype that autistic people are also introverted and prefer alone-time, but that's never been me. I legit don't understand how some people can go days or weeks by themselves; if I got more than a day without a substantive conversation, I start talking to random people just to stop myself from spiralling into my own head.
I was recently diagnosed with autism. However, I had a few questions about the questions in the RAADS-R form for my psychologist, as I also have ADHD. I found it pretty difficult to give only one answer😄 Thanks for sharing - I'm looking forward to seeing more from you in 2025🎉
Yeah, some of the questions were ambiguous . . . . rather than whether I do this now and did it then or not, I felt it needed some sort of "how much so". I "fail" to be autistic on some of the compassion/empathy questions, probably because I am female and socialized to be a caretaker. I still scored high over all.
I'm a 63- year old woman and scored 128 on RADS-R but 139 on CAT-Q which accounts for masking. You might want to try the CAT-Q as well. I'm going to watch this, and will re-take the test after watching. Edit: scored 148 when I don't take things so literal (ha!). So a difference of 20 points. Significant.
ok ok ok one more... pain. I had my teeth knocked out at work, and it literally didn't bother me. Dentist cleaning? Even after being numbed? Absolute Hell.
I’m watching the video because I wanted to see how much you got on the test XD. I got a really high score that my autistic friends haven’t been able to meet.
14:42 - getting "extremely upset" when the way I do things is suddenly changed. Again, I have an issue with the wording. How do you define "extremely"? What if I don't get upset but I get frustrated or unsure of how to react? Is that the same thing as upset? What if I get moderately upset? How do I answer? Aaaaaargh.
I know I get very internally irritated beyond what is probably healthy when my morning routine to make my breakfast is interrupted by having to share the kitchen. I do think so much of the wording is just done by NT people who likely only see what we may outwardly present and how it might be a problem to them, versus what we feel inside.
41 has confused tf outta me since I first took the RAADS-R 11 months ago. I can't even articulate what confuses me about it without needing to write a 3 page rambling essay. On that basis, I think I probably need to not bother trying to explain what I'm confused about, and answer "now and when I was young" lol. (but for the record, I think what I'm trying to figure out is what they mean by "being interested" in something versus what they mean by "what is useful"... as well as "well, do I answer 'now and when I was young' if I JUST like keeping lists of things that I'm interested in that happen to have practical uses? I'm generally not interested in anything that doesn't have some kind of practical outcome.") (... so yeah, I just sigh and answer "both now and when I was young" but it BOTHERS ME an AWFUL LOT that the question is phrased the way it is) And I don't know how to answer 61. When I was a kid, I didn't *want* to be a loner, but lots of other kids didn't like me and I went to school across town so my friends didn't live close enough to see them outside of school unless arrangements had been made with parents (small enough town that the little public transit that existed wasn't really suitable). When I was a teen, I lived in a city; I had more friends, but we mostly lived far-flung from the school and didn't have a lot of free time outside of extracurriculars. After I moved out, I had more opportunity to choose to be with friends but generally didn't feel like my boyfriend wanted to spend time with them and it somehow became difficult to hang out with anyone outside of school/work hours. Once I became a mother, I was extremely isolated (even after I divorced my husband), and it didn't take many years before I felt extremely comfortable not spending time with people. When Covid showed up, I was 47, and I was extremely happy with life becoming simplified, socially/expectation-wise (though I was quite distressed with the situation outside of the walls of my house). And since early 2022, I've lived entirely on my own, live far away from my family, and have continued Covid precautions meaning that I mostly don't participate in non-essential activities and when I *do* do something that involves sharing air, I wear my N95. I'm uninterested in participating in a society that abandons its vulnerable, and espouses eugenic norms. I'm disabled enough as it is (technically for depression; I'm only recently self-dx'd with autism); I don't need to roll the dice for the ridiculously long list of Covid sequelae over and over, which could take the things I love doing away from me (especially living in a wood-heated rural home with no support system beyond my therapist). And I don't feel lonely at all. I'm bizarrely happy/contented with the incredible peace that abandoning the effort to Do Stuff Like A Normal Person enables for me. so... am I a loner? I wouldn't have said so until recently in my life, and even now probably only because of Covid. And if anyone called me a loner earlier in my life, it would just have been one of those baseless insults mean people say about people they don't like; I was always desperately trying to navigate juggling friendships. If I *wanted* close friendships but circumstances (including possibly autism, of course) frequently made it a challenge, was I a loner? idk. And question 71 makes me want to scream lol. Are they asking do you specifically like to have people over for supper, and do you enjoy the conversation around the table? Or is it do you like to spend time with friends and family (ie, do you like talking with them, do you like having them over for a meal, etc)? It's not worded in a way that I'm confident that I know what they're asking. Because on top of that I don't know how to answer whether I enjoy it or not. I do? But. There are all kinds of qualifiers to that, that mean maybe I shouldn't answer it affirmatively.
Oh yes, I remember doing the tests during my self identification journey a few years ago, and so for many of the questions, my answers had caveats, or I wanted further information. That should be part of the scoring 😂
So many of these questions require an outside perspective, such as talking TOO loud. Almost as though one might be expected to have the trust in others to offer such a perspective, and believe they're communicating an unsolicited opinion (and not being mean or exercising some form of manipulation). Hmmm. ;-)
I scored 35, I am very sensitive to lights, sounds, people in my personal space and stuff like that. Some observations: - "It's difficult to figure out what other people expect of me" definetly true in my childhood. Well, it was true until I got out of school, so until I was 18. So the most accurate answer is c, I guess? I don't feel like I changed, I'm in a better environment with different people and I stopped taking shit from people. - "I don't like to be hugged or held" true when I was young for some reason. I don't know why, and again I don't think the point it changed was exactly around 16 y/o. - Who can tolerate things they dislike? I mean it depends on how strongly you dislike it, but waving food in front of me that I hate the taste and smell of certainly upsets me? I feel like that's a very human experience, no? - "I enjoy spending time eating and talking with my family and friends" depends on the people, was less true when I was younger, because I didn't have cool friends and at family dinner I'd get asked about school and that upset me. Why do these questions depend on other people so much? - "The same sound sometimes seems very loud or very soft, even though I know it has not changed" I said no, but that's kinda how stress works. Like when I'm more stressed my sensory overload get's worse and triggers more easily. So in a way that's true for everyone technically? - "I keep my thoughts stacked in my memory like they are on filing cards" what the heck does that mean? xD - "It calms me to spin around or to rock in a chair when I'm feeling stressed" I had intense anxiety issues so after I learned about stimming I actually started doing that consciously to calm me down. Worked really great for me. - "I usually speak in a normal tone" What's a normal tone? I don't really hear myself so how am I supposed to tell? - "Sometimes things that should feel painful are not (for instance when I hurt myself or burn my hand on the stove)" very much agree that you should see a doctor if an x degree burn doesn't hurt lol - "I can chat and make small talk with people" social anxiety said no, and I don't like small talk generally. Let's just talk about something interesting, not the weather. - "I have never been interested in what most of the people I know consider interesting" I now surround myself with people who share my interests? Again, at school I couldn't choose and was too afraid to walk up to the boys cause that was kinda taboo and I didn't understand why. - "I try to be as helpful as I can when other people tell me their personal problems" I think I understand what they mean. But sometimes just listening and affirming is very helpful, so I do that. - "I feel very comfortable with dating or being in social situations with others" Who feels "very comftable" on a first date??? Who?!?!?! No introvert would answer yes I think. - "I cannot tell when someone is flirting with me" lol I'm asexual and yes the whole thing was a mystery to me until I learned about it. It freaked me out xD - "The phrase 'I've got you under my skin' makes me uncomfortable" whoever invented that phrase is a psychopath. - "I speak with a normal rhythm" how do I tell? What's a "normal" rythm? - "I have never wanted or needed to have what other people call an 'intimate relationship.'" What about aromantic or asexual people? Or just "late bloomers"? - "Meeting new people is usually easy for me" social anxiety, so back then definetly not! - "Others consider me odd or different" That definetly was the case back then. I did consider the other people to be odd too sooo there's that. - "I focus on details rather than the overall idea" Honestly I don't know. At work I focus on both at different times? - "I am often surprised when others tell me I have been rude" I know what I did, and I'm not sorry :D
I just took it. I was surprised that I did score 159, so borderline strong evidence of autism. I have ADHD and only realized I was heavily masking in the last couple years, so I was sort of shocked how high my score was 🤣
also the literal question was so hard for me to answer because of the "always" qualifier as even if there is one time that someone is not literal then it would be completely false that they are "always literal". to make it harder "never true" being one of the answers just adds another qualifier that is a struggle to answer
100%
I just realised how ironic my reply of; 100% to you is 😂😬
YES!!!!!
@@Pupperski haha
That was my exact experience. In general, these tests have so much ambiguity in their wording that I kept get results just below the cut off for diagnosis. Eventually though, it sort of clicked for me. I think I ended up thinking of the questions through the lens of "what would a neurotypical think this means" rather than what was ACTUALLY worded to ask. It seems obvious in hindsight, but I guess I thought stuff like this would be carefully worded. Fuck me, I guess?
having questions about the questions is very relatable haha.
I must have really annoyed the person assessing me back then. they told me I could write notes, so I gave them pages worth explaining every single answer, and all the possible ways I could have interpreted each one and which interpretation I used when giving my answer.
Haha. In my ADHD eval, I had a ton of questions about the context of the questions because SO MANY were ambiguous in my mind!
In the results, she said she rated me as "moderate" rather than severe because of inconsistencies in my answers. THAT'S BECAUSE THEY WERE WRITTEN POORLY!
YES! 🙌 🧡
It's so weird to me that these assessments don't actually want the extra; they don't provide any extra guidance or examples. Just tick the damn boxes! LOL.
@@Autistic_AFI'm hanging on with the hope that before too long there will be a new set of questionnaires made by ND folks with questions written in a more "ND-esque" manner. Not only would it be more suited to ascertain accurate answers from autistics, it would probably also do a good job of filtering out NT people who wouldn't care to fill out a set of nuanced questions looking for thoroughly thought-through and comprehensive responses.
I had an essay on the questionair and an essay with all the stuff I noticed/been told related to the dsm criteria from my selfdiagnosis time. Now officials diagnosed
@@EsmereldaPeayes!!!
5:50 I inherited my mom's language skills, was talking before 12 months, and have had a tendency to absolutely inhale any reading material set before me since I learned to read. I can process idiomatic language with no problem. My autistic over-literalness tends to consist of not sufficiently considering the possibility that someone may be lying, and in an extraordinarily dry sense of humor that involves a lot of responding to other people's jokes with an elaboration in the idea delivered completely deadpan.
Highly relatable, both crazy language acquisition, the literal-ness and humour. Does this or that idiom make sense to me? Of course not in a sense that it’s nonsense unless you know it’s an idiom, but that’s the case for all people, no…? And I know what an idiom is and know meanings of a lot of them. But realising that someone may be sarcastic or lying or speaking half truths is way harder.
Replying to other people’s joke with being completely serious is hilarious in my opinion and I also do that 😂
Good, it's not just me - I always seem to forget that lying is a thing until it's way too late. (And dry humor is best humor!)
Thanks, Mike! I was impressed how quickly you interpreted and answered the questions. For me, it would take so much longer to work out what all the neurotypical-speak meant. I found it amusing that the question about "putting yourself in other people's shoes" (an idiom) was followed by a question about having problems with idioms 🤣.
Seriously though, it is so important for these questionnaires to be edited by actually Autistic people. There is so much assumed NT context that Autistic folks just don't necessarily share.
I have absolutely no idea whether I have interpreted the questions, especially the more ambiguous ones, in the way that the study authors intended! 😂
I caught that, too! Why the heck would you use an idiom in a test designed for people who may have trouble with idioms outside of specifically testing for trouble with idioms! These tests REALLY need overhauled by actual autists, I strongly concur! 👍
“Forced to play by other people’s rules” a very good description. Feeling an imposed one-sided set of assumptions on their part suddenly imposed on you without warning with no way out of it.
I took the RAADS-R cause a couple of my friends were taking on a school trip. It took me a few hours because i had so many questions (and we were running around doing things).
Long story short, i scored 193 (15, 87, 51, 40 for each category in order) and started looking into Autism. Tens of hours of research, writing a 12 page research paper about autistic communication for fun (not including the cover page or citations), and subscribing to a few late diagnosed autistic youtubers later: I’m pretty sure I’m autistic and I feel comforted that who I am and why I am certain ways has an explantation and that I’m not just ‘weird’.
I scored 165. Language 13, Social relatedness 76, Sensory Motor 42, Circumscribed interests 34. After taking this test about 3 years ago, at a friend's suggestion, I started researching autism and found myself thinking "oh, I'm not the only one who does that!", "oh, there's a term for the way I think about this!", "I'm not just weird, I'm different like Quinn and Meg and Mike, and I'm not alone!" It's put a new perspective on my life.
🧡
The idiom questions don't make sense if you are not a native english speaker. Where I'm from we use a lot of idioms and nearly everyone learns english, so you just get a list of idioms, what they mean, and then the idioms in english. So you don't have to guess their meaning from context, you just get a list to memorize.
It’s unfortunate that so much internet stuff, just in general, is so “native-born American probably white” normative. We aren’t the only people who exist in the world! In fact, we are only a tiny percent! But we have the most money, so… 🫤
Edit: typo. I sincerely wish autocorrect would stop adding letter and even whole words I never typed to my typing… 😑
I thought the same. English is not my first language.. we have idioms in german too, but I cant remember what I thought when I heard them the first time @.@
I did take this test a while back, and I won't ever again. I remember having so much difficulty just understanding each question. This test literally took me over an hour because I was second-guessing everything 😭 I also find besides the fact it's questions are very outdated in some ways and seem to go along with the usual "autism stereotypes", it also completely dismisses and takes out of consideration people who have adhd and autism (which we know is very common).
Yes!
I am also late diagnosed. I took this quiz as a starting place. It did not screen me as being autistic. It took years for me to find out that highly masking autistic women often do not screen for autism on these online quizzes. I won't go into the rabbit hole that led me to becoming convinced I am autistic, but I became convinced I am by researching autism in women, watching vids put out by autistic people. I contacted an organization that helps people with developmental conditions and they selected a neuropsychiatrist that specializes in identifying missed autistic adults. Highly masking women often get missed even when we go in for evaluation. I feel lucky that I got the doctor that screened me because she was well educated in spotting women with autism.
I just wanted to point out that you can be almost normal socially, I can hold conversations, I enjoy small talk, I would be described as a social leader, I have been known as the person that throws parties, etc. I love people. But the older I get the harder it has been for me to be social, the more exhausting it is for me to perform social tasks, the more avoidant I become of public places. I am writing this comment because other women might see this vid and screen themselves out based on these quizzes. They weren't designed to screen us. They were designed to miss us. Autistic women are often socially motivated, able to have long term friendships. I DO have some forms of social dysfunction, but they would not be what you'd expect. I am too empathetic at times. But my biggest social deficit is because there is one emotion I do not feel that others do. I have no capacity for jealousy. I know what it is to feel envy, but I jealousy is a foreign emotion. I do not feel angry at people because I envy them. I never knew that jealousy is a huge motivator for many people. This one little blind spot caused by autistic alexithymia has been a huge problem for me. I feel most emotions in a neurotypical way, I have both cognitive and emotional empathy for every other emotion but that one. And because I don't feel it i don't see it in others, until it is too late. And that wouldn't normally be a problem except I am a perfectionist that a lot of people have been jealous of. I just wanted to say, if you are a woman, and you sometimes don't understand why someone is mad at you, or what you did to make someone dislike you, you might be autistic.
When I was re-evaluated last year, the psychologist didn't think that these tests have any validity, which should have been my first clue that I wasn't going to get a proper evaluation.
@@karenholmes6565 hello, this is interesting. I’m 31 and throughout my life I have not understood jealousy. I keep asking my mum, “is that a jealousy thing?” She says of course, like I understand what that implies but I still don’t really get it. People can be very cruel to me throughout my life, including my sister and I think it might be motivated by jealousy. As I’ve always been good at things, like exams and sport. I’m glad it’s not just me. Would have helped to be taught what jealousy means in life as a child.
I am hyper empathetic and I dislike the empathy questions. Differences in empathy either way can cause social issues.
I’ve never really understood human motivation in terms of putting each other down and trying to hurt others to make you feel better. Or even revenge, I don’t feel it very strongly, if at all. As so many people are cruel to me, I would be completely alone if I took revenge on people who hurt me. I don’t enjoy hurting people, even if they have hurt me. If it gets too much, I will end a relationship. Most people hurt me I think because they are jealous or enjoy seeing someone else suffer. Because I’m a nice person, pleasing to look at, funny, caring. I seem to have traits that would not encourage abuse but here we are.
Perhaps it’s because I don’t respond in the way people predict or want.
Luckily on the whole I now have really lovely people in my life who are good to me. Hope you have the same.
@@topsyturvygirlI was in my early 50s when I finally understood exactly how deeply people can feel jealousy. My sister was deeply jealous of me for our entire life. I didn't get just how deeply she felt that until our mom was terminally ill in the hospital. She said to me that when I was born I took her parents away from her. That is how she acted towards me at the worst moment of my life. I realized I never understood exactly why she had been so hostile and passive aggressive towards me.
I knew she thought I was prettier than she was. Like you, I was very attractive when I was younger. I was a scholar as well. I went to college on scholarships, etc. I was selected to lead clubs and groups in school. I have been the target of undermining and backstabbing because some people can't stand it when they think someone else is better than they are, because normies think in hierarchy
Me too. Thanks for this great post ❤
@topsyturvygirl - your comment and the original one could have been written by me! It never occurred to me until now that my lack of understanding of jealousy and lack of desire for revenge could ever be explained or that I would find others who felt the same. I feel so seen. Thank you.
I'm not professionally diagnosed with autism but do have an ADHD Dx. At 63, realizing how others' jealousy has played a role in destroying my self esteem over the years. If I had read things as jealousy instead of internalizing the negativity, I would have made very different choices in life.
And a hearty YES to there being a huge difference between envy (which I feel) and jealousy (which I don't)!
#3. Am I surprised when people tell me I'm rude? Am I surprised when the sun rises in the east, am I surprised that the tide comes in and goes out, or that dogs bark?
No, not at all. I've come to expect such mundane things.
I am surprised that they could have found what I said to be rude, rather than honest and thoughtful, but the fact that they say it was rude is only part of the fundamental warp and weft of nature.
#7. It means they are the cat's pajamas and the bee's knees. Next question.
#10. I have to choose just one? Both texture and flavor are critical. Mushy food, bland food, sour food, food that has no identity. Chunky soups are intolerable. I can't eat them and I can't drink them. They need to decide what they want to be!
#16. Always true. I can only imagine being me. That's why I like fantasy stories. I love watching people being incomprehensible in fantastic settings.
#24. Define 'highly'. Am I supposed to be rating this on a scale? I can give an answer in absolute terms, but I can't give a relative rating without knowing what scale you're using.
#27. They say I'm a smart aleck because I answer the question they ask, rather than the question they mean. I used that in the novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo this year. They say the main female lead answers questions like that, so you have to be extremely precise with questions.
I never use the word autistic, but I'll be very disappointed if no one recognizes themselves in her.
#33. Again, define 'normal'. I have no idea what rhythms are normal or not.
#35. Edgar, from Men In Black.
#59. I have no idea where that bruise came from.
I went through ordeals where they prescribed Percocet because it was going to be extremely painful and I needed to be ready for it. Root canal, shattered shoulder joint, kidney stone surgery. Once the anesthetic wore off, never more than a dull ache.
#75. I always had a map in my pocket. I picked them up free at the service station, where people filled their cars. I love paper maps.
Total Score: 207, but it changes depending on how I interpret the question on a particular day. I think my lowest score was 180 or so.
And these questions should really be written by autistic people. We'll call it the RAADS-AQ (autistic questions) test.
I would add for anyone looking into self identification:
One of the criteria for an autism diagnosis is that the traits of autism have to cause significant detriment to your life. This is effectively the difference between having autistic traits and having autism.
I also recognise that most people who are looking into whether they may be autistic generally do so when something is causing detriment to their lives.
I don't think it's something people have, it's something people are. If you remove my limbs I would still be me. If you rewired my brain to make it neurotypical, the mind inhabiting that brain would not be me. I think "it causes significant detriment" would be criteria for a diagnosis of a disorder. But there are plenty of us out there who are autistic and not disordered.
There needs to be a way to describe that, that we as a community can settle on, and which doesn't encourage gatekeeping.
Yes, and I think one way to define this is to recognize the “unfulfilled potential” that has other people wondering why someone so “smart” has not achieved much or followed a career path. Despite academic achievement, I always felt I just didn’t understand or know what options were available and how to pursue them. At the same time, I’m missing a lot of little, everyday skills. I really depend on my partner to step in and take care of a lot of things. (cue the feelings of inadequacy and shame)
"Question 17: Others consider me odd or different. Um, yep, moving on" 😂😂😂
I have never received comments about that actually, so I don't understand how you can answer a question about something which does not exist. "No" is not valid because it could be that people think you are odd but they just don't voice it out loud.
@@Kamishi845that was easy to answer 😅
@@Kamishi845This was my biggest gripe throughout the process! It’s generally considered rude to say negative things about someone to their face, no matter how much you think it in your head, and I don’t know precisely what negative things people are thinking about me unless they TELL ME!!! So I had to carefully sift through a lifetime of painful memories to dig out the nuggets of “You really need to make more eye contact.”, “You need to control your facial expressions; rolling your eyes is extremely rude!”, “I said the patient had a serious infection and she CHUCKLED!”, and “You made her cry when you talked about her job like it was easy (as in, maybe something I could do; that’s happened to me twice)!”. 😥
I reached the point of "Yes I am a nerd and a bit strange. What 's next?" And my two best friends are a bit nerdy too, so it is nice.
DUDE! Thank you for that comment on the crowds. I often think "I am fine speaking to crowds/teaching/etc." But I am completely bumbling and erratic in a "group" where people are conversing.
My pleasure! 😇
I intend to go back to lectoring (that’s “reading” for the non-Catholics!) at church soon, because I want to support my church and am comfortable in front of a group. Yes, that is extremely different from, say, sitting around the Thanksgiving table chatting! 😬
I scored 130 a few months ago when finally after 50 years that a person diagnosed with Autism and ADHD which children that are also diagnosed, told me that I obviously have autism and ADHD.
Language subtotal - 6
Social relatedness subtotal - 85
Sensory/motor subtotal - 13
Circumscribed interests subtotal - 26
I would say I mask a lot and I’ve been told that I am highly intelligent so I presume that enables me to adapt.
Procrastinated until I had another burnout at work - finally saw the doctor and he agreed to refer me for autism and ADHD assessment.
Off work at the moment, I’m finding much harder that I’m older coping with work. I think I was more resilient (hate that word) when I was younger.
I found these questions very difficult as I take them literally and over analyse them. And felt that many of them I just could not answer at all as they don’t apply or not logical.
I took it twice with my wife this year, and it was pretty indicative. I received a 189, and she a 45.
I trade stock, so I don’t need a diagnosis, but it was refreshing to learn this is why I am as I am. What’s also interesting is, after learning this, it’s now surprisingly easy to spot others with ASD. It’s like having a built in autism detector, and I’m sure others are the same.
Everybody that I've clocked as autistic that has subsequently been evaluated has received a diagnosis. I was over at a family friend's house this evening and spent a while playing a game with one of their kids (diagnosed) and a child of their other guests (undiagnosed). Between the three of us, hardly any eye contact was exchanged, and both of the kids were stimming vigorously.
@@JonBrase Isn't that funny how it works? It's really like a built in radar. I've found it even extends to movies/shows.
I was watching a Hallmark murder mystery show (Mistletoe Murders) with my wife recently, and I told her it had to have been written by someone autistic based on the content. Sure enough, it is.
Again, we seem to have a built-in radar.
Every time I take a version of this, I find myself randomly picking between "true only now" and "true only when I was young" whenever something's always been PARTIALLY true or the answer Depends On How You Define It. If there was an actual neutral choice, or an "I don't know", I'd be happy!
However, I do find it _otherwise_ accurate at telling me I am autistic. :P
This time RAADZ-R said I have 160, "Very strong evidence for autism"!
(Commenting before watching, so sorry if you mentioned everything I said ^^')
On Idioms, in my assessment they asked me what I see in my imagination when someone says “it’s raining cats and dogs”. Do you imagine it raining hard or cats and dogs falling from the sky?
Apparently allistic people without aphantasia imagine it raining heavily. I imagine cats and dogs falling from the sky.
Similarly with “got you under my skin”. The reason it’s ick is because my brain gives me a literal image of someone moving under my skin like in Alien. Many metaphorical song lyrics are like this.
I imagine cats and dogs hitting our patio roof. It never occurred to me that people would just imagine heavy rain.
@@harrietwindebank6051 this reminds me of the first time I heard the idiom "throwing out the baby with the bathwater" lol, I was so shocked and had to look up what it was supposed to mean
Thanks for this Mike. Knowing the true prevalence of autism is the key to supporting it and us. As a 60 year old with a medical diagnosis, I'm 1:18,000 supposedly. It's a shocking figure that reflects massive underdiagnosis - not an increase in actual prevalence. We need to encourage everyone to get screened - especially older adults like me. Until childhood rates match geriatric rates, there will be a lost autistic cohort. As difficult and tragic as my life has been, my diagnosis gave it meaning.
That changed everything. It's been a challenging journey, but I'm finding my footing, and living my best possible life.
My Autism is a blessing.
25:00 - wanting to do the things the same day after day. I had a hard time with this one as well.
My ADHD craves novelty, but for instance, when I was travelling this summer, I had my regular coffee place, and my regular lunch place, amd the place I liked to meet up with friends for drinks. And I had to think twice when asked to go to a different place. Id usually go, but if I were tired, for instance, I'd be less likely to go to a new place.
I've always answered that "never" true, but now I'm thinking I should answer it differently.
I have been researching autism for several months now, and I keep wondering if I am assessing myself correctly.This video is very useful because I found a big test that doesn't consist of questions like "do you have problems with looking someone in the eye?" and I was also able to see how another person interprets the question, which is important for me! For example, I noticed that I really like numbers and statistics, like calculating the percentage of work done today, just for fun, but I never thought that this was an autistic trait.
I got 101 points on the test(9, 37, 31, 24), I can't be sure if I'm actually autistic until I get an official diagnosis, but I guess today I got confirmation that I actually have a lot of autistic traits
Question five seems to assume that if you haven't changed by 16, you haven't changed at all. As someone who started feeling comfortable and fluent in social situations at around age 25, I don't really know what to answer. I guess that's why it's good to take this test while you have someone you can ask.
'You used to buy road maps when driving'...for my last birthday, I received a road atlas and I *love* it! My last atlas was for 2016 so it was time for a revised edition.
Ace! I used to enjoy 'navigating' from the back of the car with one of these atlases! I actually recently found an old OS map from the 1800s; which is fantastic to compare to the modern day versions.
@@Autistic_AF Google Scottish national library ordnance survey,they have electronic historic maps for across the whole of the UK right back to the 1800s. Choose the area and it'll show what maps they have. I used to (still do) just read maps and atlases. Even for places I've never been to
Specifically, I hate how the only mentions of texture sensitivities end with "this is MORE important than how it tastes/looks" when to me they typically matter EQUALLY!
I don't eat things I don't like the taste of if I like the texture. I don't wear things I find ugly just because they're comfortable (Even if "ugly but comfortable" is how _others_ would describe my outfit...)
I think having the same set of answers for each question, with no "maybe", is a hinderance. Those questions need a "first half true, second half not" answer for me to tell the truth!
Also the hyperempathy erasure, with "no" to the empathy questions raising your score, bothers me a heck of a lot but that's typical
That would be my answer for the food. I can't stand bitter or sour foods that other people love.
But the texture is also vital. I can't choose one or the other.
I won't wear something I consider ugly either, but I also put that under the sensory category. My decisions are based on what makes my eyes happy, not on what is in style. It is about how it looks to me. I do make sure it isn't something that may be offensive and consider other people's perspective, but the goal is that I like it.
@@RuiNa42After 13 years of mostly acting “en loco parentis” to other people’s very vulnerable children (either very young or disabled), my wardrobe consists primarily of elastic waist jeans and G-rated t-shirts! I’m comfortable AND they’re comfortable! 🤣
I can think of two tasty foods that I could not eat as a child because of texture: jello, and whipped cream. I enjoy them as an older adult.
5:16 The question about ‘putting myself in other people’s shoes’ launched a really interesting reflection in me:
- No one’s shoes are so big that I could put my whole self in them
- No one’s shoes are so small that I can’t put part of myself into them
- Obviously this is true literally but it’s also true of me metaphorically
- When I put part of myself in other people’s shoes it’s normally because I’m putting my hand in my kids’ shoes to look for stones etc
- So even when part of me is in another’s shoes it’s not the equivalent part of my body, but rather my hand groping around to get a sense of their experience
- And that’s how I generally empathise with others: I reconstruct through intellectually fumbling around to gauge the basic dimensions of someone else’s experience.
I never realised that metaphor could have so much in it!
Definitely have a lot of questions about the questions. I find myself wishing there were other answers that make more sense to me than the ones they give. But you do your best with it, trying to be as honest (with yourself) as possible. For me it came out to 163. It really does take some serious thought to consider (also remember!) your experiences, recognizing especially a lot of things you short-circuited yourself from doing (or even admitting you were feeling) in life, especially childhood, because you were scolded and/or embarrassed out of it.
I took the other test, scored a 40. But I remember, as I took it, saying, yes when I was younger/a kid. I've learned to mask a LOT of stuff and adapted to fit in. This test, sounds the way the questions should be asked. thanks for that!
My experience as well prior to getting my diagnosis. I used to think a lot of things come naturally to me, but I have realized how draining those situations often are - meaning they are a result of masking.
If the test answer doesnt sit quite well with you, I suggest you take some of the other tests. The Embrace Autism website is a gold mine for loads of tests along with discussions of their pros and cons.
Also, i recommend coming back to the tests in a few weeks' or months' time. Taking the tests multiple times helped me make sense of them and get accurate answers
13:17 I had a friend who took things too literally. He ended up in prison on larceny charges. 😂
That pun is an oldie but a goodie.
@@JonBrase 😂
I have done all the online tests. The Aspie Quiz is easiest to understand. RAADS was what my psychologist led me to do and I was even more confused than you!
Yes! This was the test that, after all the little online quizzlets were like 🤷♀️ and made me think I probably wasn’t autistic enough to be autistic, told me I was more autistic than the average autistic, which made me carefully reconsider my position! 😳
11) I always prided myself on not getting homesick; I don’t automatically reach out to others for support when upset. Part of this is because my parents were the precise OPPOSITE of emotionally supportive, and I now understand that this isn’t actually a good sign, but this may be what they are getting at; I answered D on this one.
26) The Christmas and New Year parties are going horribly when I can’t outright avoid them, thank you for asking! 🫠
People who suspect they may do a lot of “acting” to survive, more likely those AFAB, should definitely consider taking the CAT-Q if they score equivocally on the RAADS-R; I myself actually don’t mask much, though. Too autistic! 😅
Agreed! As a late-diagnosed high-masking woman I found the CAT-Q to be great but the RAAD irrelevant, vague and annoying
I identified myself to be AuDHD this year. As a highly masking woman with a special interest in languages, psychology, politics and social studies, I find it hard to answer questionnaires, because I often 1)know several answers, which sometimes can be opposite and lead to both yes and no, 2)have a version of myself for outside world (people usually read it as an excitement, even when it’s not) and a version for home->1st has tendency to be very open and engage in everything, 2nd is a complete loner spending most time at home with my computer, 3)because of p.2 I feel a need to “mask” into an autistic self and play along with a questionnaire using a scheme: 1)try to understand which autistic quality the question is referred to, 2)recall my own presentation of that quality, because it often is masked or differs from the example given, 3)answer rather about the quality, than to the exact question. With all of this taken into account I usually score in an “autistic range”, but pretty close to an “allistic” border. I assume that if I answered such a questionnaire ~5 years ago, I would not score autistic. At the same time, as I’m getting further in the process of unmasking, I assume over time I may score “more autistic”.
I also think one of the big difficulties for me is recognizing my autistic traits, because for my whole life I’ve considered them to be standard and even never had a thought that other people are SO different from myself.
E.g. I still have no idea on how to distinguish people by their qualities (what does it mean to have “high nose”, “moon-shaped face” or to be “smart”, “responsible”, “coward” etc. in real life), how it’s possible to make diminishing jokes about animals/people or how someone can become successful just for their social skill without actual knowledge of the topic. And many people I’ve seen are able to do all of these naturally.
Question 75 "When I go somewhere, I have to follow a familiar route or I can get very confused and upset" - like a lot of these questions, my answer reflects the fact that I have a work-around. Back before GPS enabled mobile phones I always had a map, and I applied myself to learning how to use it. When I started driving (which I did early, as it reflected a special interest), after once getting really hopelessly lost, I actually signed up to do a taxi licence - not because I wanted to drive taxis, but because the course would force me to learn and memorise key routes, places of interest etc. I also made sure always to have a street directory (for driving in the big city) and road atlas (for out of town).
Going out bush, which I've always liked doing, I would have the 1:25,000 topo map - I have a whole suite of them - and compass, and I did orienteering to learn how to be good at using them. You also learn techniques in orienteering like aiming off, and the importance of using landforms and features as "handrails" or "catches" to help you to avoid becoming lost.
Even now, with GPS, I'll sit down before going somewhere new and have a good look at what to expect: route, distance, time, stops, alternatives, and even then I'll have the GPS on in the car or while walking.
So do I get confused and upset? No, because I have a System ;-)
Highly relatable stuff, Mike.
This was really helpful! To watch you talk out loud about all the added notes you'd have and questions for clarification, made me feel less alone with how unclear or too one-sided these questions seemed to me. I've done the RAADS-R test twice. First time my score was actually pretty low, then someone said if the question says something like "always" or "never" and I would like to pick "sometimes agree and sometimes don't agree" then I should opt for "agree". So with that perspective I ended up with a much higher score. The comment section at embrace-autism shows that a couple of people are struggling with this 😅
And I also realized, when I just watched you comment on question 41. (I keep lists of things that interest me, even when they have no practical use (for example sports statistics, train schedules, calendar dates, historical facts and dates) saying "yeah not bags full of physical lists, but in digital form" that just enlightened me 🤣because this was yet another question I took too literal and checked "never". Yet I have a memento list of TV shows I've watched and update it whenever I've completed a new season for a show and also keep a list of movies watched on letterboxd. I guess you're totally right and digital lists are definitely a thing 🥲and therefore I shouldn't have answered "never" 😂
i scored a 196
language: 13
Social Relatedness: 84
Sensory/motor: 60
Circumscribed Interests: 39
glad i decided to keep the pdf of my results. RAADS-r was the thing that convinced me to start going down the road towards diagnosis, but i never would've known it existed had another autistic person on social media not sent me a DM asking me if i was autistic. answered so many previously unanswered questions about why i struggled in life. as an added bonus, i find it somewhat easier to be kinder to myself, because now i know that it's not because i'm a screw-up; i'm just different and the world isn't built to accommodate brains like mine
still have a long journey ahead of me, but i'm hopeful it eventually leads me to a better place in life. or at the very least some peace of mind
Mike - I think you should answer 55 about group projects differently. BECAUSE you are the one to do the projects rather than doing them AS A GROUP.
I've had the same experience except there's always a resentment that I'm stuck doing the lion's share (or all) of the work in order to get a good grade.
"Ever heard of black and white thinking?" -- I do love how autistic traits as described by neurotypicals include "rigid thinking", and a lot of the time I actually find neurotypical thinking rigid!
The "literal thinking" was one part of the criteria that kept me from identifying as autistic for a very long time, because I... took it too literally. I teach languages and literature, I am great at understanding idioms, metaphors, analogies etc., so I didn't see how I could be seen as too literal.
But thanks to content like yours, I realized that I've always struggled with weirdly phrased instructions and requests where there are implied expectations, and with small talk that conveys a different meaning than the words being said. You're right about "incorrectly imprecise"!
I got 181 🎉 very simmilar to your results 19, 77, 47, 38. I guess it would be higher if not for my masking and social anxiety, and if the questions were better worded.
I find it funny because I made a mental map of my autistic traits and then found your video where you did the same, some family members don't belive my selfdiagnosis, so I had to tell them about that 😂
I am so happy that I am made this way, even with all the struggles, I question things and not just follow people blindly, which is very important in todays society with everything so normalized. I love the autistic community so much!!
I have so many questions about some of those questions lol. Most of the questions NEED clarification, they need context because so many of the questions refer to things that have different outcomes in different situations.
Absolutely! Only a woolly-minded NT could have made up these vague, ambiguous, context-dependent questions
My trouble with that sort of test, is neither the questions nor the answers are ever quite nuanced enough.
And they say "well, just pick the closest"
Which is stressful AF, because choosing between pointedly inaccurate answers, which will lead to poor assumptions, which causes me no End of people not getting what I'm pointing at, which is the Bane of my fucking existence, sucks.
I'm already translating odd, far reaching, deeply interconnected emotional sense images into "mostly, but not really, close enough language", but now I'm having to suss out the worldview of whoever decided on That loaded question, and these canned answers which are not My answer.
My entire existence and interface with the world and everything, is deeply complicated context dependent.
*sigh*
Me too!
Thanks for going through the test with us, Mike. Interpreting some of the questions can be difficult. I scored a 175 the first time I took it, and now a 163 - 16/83/30/34.
One of the most surprising even shocking things to me was once I watched Judge Judy. I recall that she made her mind up over a persons guilt or innocence over their memory. She claimed that a persons memory gets worse over time not better. Stated this as a fact. I disagree. My memory oftentimes improves once I realise the meaning, sometimes decades later. Could this raise concerns of injustice through misunderstood accepted behavioural norms?
Valid point.
15:32 We seem to have a tendency to in some sense "think in paragraphs rather than sentences", so we end up with a couple sentences queued up in our heads faster than we can actually speak those sentences, but we may not have the next thought ready before we've completed those sentences, and then we end up stalling waiting for our brain to deliver the next few sentences. I find it's worse when I'm tired, in which case my speech centers have a tendency to bluescreen and reboot in the middle of a----
--- I'll speak English in a minute here ----
--- Loading, please wait ---
--- Ummm ---
--- Uhhhhh... ---
--- What was I saying? ---
--- Oh yes... in the middle of a sentence.
I scored 191 last time I did the raads-r test. I keep thinking of things I did as a child & wondering how no one noticed my whole life!! 💚
See now, I always took "heart on the sleeve" to mean very sensitive. Loves strongly and then gets hurt often. Because their heart is unprotected. So it is a good quality, but with a downside.
It’s been a couple years since I did this, so I decided to take it again along with you. 181, which is maybe 20 or so higher than the last time. I was masking more then, understand the context of the questions better now, recognize masked past experiences better now, etc. Basically more of the previous true only responses have been more accurately changed to true then and now.
My wife and I tested ourselves 2 years ago, both on spectrum, she's higher than me. Tested myself again more carefully 9 months ago. Total 171. Now, my wife says I am not autistic and invalidates me, leaving me feeling upset and depressed. How do I cope with this invalidation? I'm now really struggling with suicidal thoughts. I'm in my 60's and had always wondered what was wrong with me. Autism explains everything, wish I had known when I was young.
@@ThoughtfulAl - is your wife an expert in diagnosing adults with autism? If not, then ignore her gaslighting. Please reach out to a qualified counselor to talk about your suicidal thoughts. They will also help you determine how to address this concerning way she's treating you.
You don't say where you're located, but if you feel you are in danger of harming yourself, please seek help immediately, whether from a hotline or by going to an Emergency Room or A&E.
It also might help to get an official diagnosis. If your wife is frightened of an Autism diagnosis, she might be denying your self-evaluation because it means hers is invalid as well. I'm just spitballing one possibility here.
Your feelings are valid and you are needed on this planet. You have community here.
Agree with all of above comment, would like to say that your wife may not be able to understand the nuances, depending upon her autism. But do get help.
Please contact your local crisis helpline; they’ll be able to help you directly - some of them work over text and WhatsApp which is great.
www.helpguide.org/find-help
Took the test
EDIT: Well, I scored a 230 on the test. Language: 21 Social: 107 Sensory: 60 Circuscribed Interests: 42
How did I survive so long on my own? Not well.
Welcome to the club! ❤️
I hope this result can be a stepping stone for you to find yourself in a better place eventually
You aced it!!! Congratulations! 🎉
Thank you for taking this test and going question by question Mike. I tried taking this again and I get so frustrated with the black and white answers and I'm glad to see you struggling how to answer as much as I did. We have slightly different personalities but our scores were very close to the same. Maybe one day I'll get officially diagnosed (37 now).
Hi, Mike…in your intro, you said that there is no brain scan to tell if you’re autistic.
I know that diagnosis is based on observed behaviors, but while I wasn’t officially diagnosed as being ASD until March of this year, I always took great comfort in the results of a brain mapping that was done by an internationally respected neurologist when I was seeking help for mental health issues back in the late 1990’s; because the results clearly showed that my brain is wired vastly different to the majority of the population.
As I’ve done my own research and learned more about autism over the last two years, I thought the results of that brain mapping (though, the lack of understanding regarding masking and how autism presents in females with no comorbid intellectual deficit meant that no conclusions were drawn or diagnosis given at the time the brain mapping was done) showed the lack of synaptic pruning that is a key feature of autism. So, even though this medical test isn’t widely available, or used as current diagnostic criteria, isn’t it a “brain scan that can show autism”?
@SkeletalSculptor, thanks for sharing your experience! I’m glad you found comfort in the brain mapping results-it’s always validating to see tangible evidence that our brains may function differently.
As you mentioned, the brain scan you had done showed something that aligns with the current understanding of autism, like atypical synaptic pruning perhaps or hemisphere connectivity differences? While these differences can certainly appear on certain types of brain imaging, they aren’t used as official diagnostic tools right now. Autism is still formally identified through behavioral assessments and developmental history. That’s partly because:
1. Variability: Autistic traits manifest differently among individuals, so there’s no single “brain signature” that applies to all autistic people.
2. Early Clinical Focus: Professionals rely on developmental observations (often from childhood) and how those traits affect day-to-day functioning.
3. Limited Accessibility: Specialised brain imaging techniques, like the one you had in the ‘90s, aren’t widely available, and insurance (US) doesn’t usually cover them for autism diagnosis.
That said, as research progresses, it’s totally possible that more precise neuroimaging or genetic screening could complement the diagnostic process in the future. But for the moment, official clinical criteria lean on interviews, questionnaires, and direct observation.
I love that you brought this up, because it underscores how autism isn’t “just in our heads”; there are biological underpinnings-some that can show up in detailed scans. It’s not that the scans are meaningless-they just aren’t yet considered a consistent enough diagnostic tool across the board.
Thanks again for watching and commenting-I really appreciate you sharing your story ☺️
Take care,
Mike 🧡
@@Autistic_AF gotta say I don't like this use of AI text - posted under your own name as if it were your own words. It feels dishonest to me. I don't know if that's just me tho
I would love to get more information on this. I have 2 MRIs of my brain, and I'd love to know what the neurologist was looking at in your brain scan.
It would be interesting to see if there are any autism traits that can be mapped to particular features of brain scans. There's Autistic you tuber I follow called "I am Mindblind", who also has Aphantasia - the inability to see images in her mind and SDAM - inability to record Autobiagraphical memories. I don't know if she's done a brain scan, but recently I listened to a podcast talking about spectrum between Aphantasia, and Hyperphantasia - people who can see images in their mind as if they were real. They believe people with hyperphatasia have more connections between the frontal lobe and the visual cortex enabling them to manipulate images more easily in their minds. Where as people with Aphantasia may have weaker links. Temple Grandin talks about her brainscan in her book about Visual Thinking. She has more connections than normal between her frontal lob and visual cortext and she has very strong visual abilities supporting that idea .
It’s not AI.
Another test to bring to my next doctor appointment.
Thank you.
31:33 I only started driving in 2016 (2 months after turning 17 as driving is a special interest) and I bought a paper map of Northern Ireland (where I live) for my car. I have used it once so far when the usual route home was closed due to a serious RTC. It was only a matter of driving for a couple of miles, making one turn, then popping back onto the road I know, but still, I'm that scared of getting lost I couldn't go more than a few hundred metres down that unfamiliar road without checking. I have to do trial runs to places I don't know in the days before actually going as well, and that's after a lot of google maps (other brands available) planning. I do use my phone for navigating, but I only connect to the WiFi at home so am dependent on offline maps/routes I've downloaded before setting off.
Yeah. I don't know when to stop. I only wanted to say I got a paper map despite them seeming like ancient artifacts. :)
OK, in expanding to answer question 75 from simply wanting to talk about my paper road map, I also answered no.78. :)
Total:166 Language subtotal:16, Social relatedness subtotal:70, Sensory/motor subtotal:47, Circumscribed interests subtotal:33
Question 75 made me chuckle to myself. When I go somewhere, I have to follow a familiar route or I can get very confused and upset. I've always been interested in globes, maps, exploring, walking, biking, compass and star navigation as far back as I can remember... Also taste. I like extreme tastes. I chew and suck the insides of my cheeks and hands/fingers, grind my teeth when I am a wake or asleep. I also use to chew all my tshirts. Saying this, I pretty much eat the same breakfast and lunch everyday. I have about 4 different variations of dinner
Total:181
Language subtotal:19
Social relatedness subtotal:93
Sensory/motor subtotal:46
Circumscribed interests subtotal:23
i told my coworker i was autistic and she asked if i take everything literally. i told her "no, you're thinking of kleptomaniacs"
@@DJ_Black_Tourmaline 😂
Mine is 194, and I'm what I call soft diagnosed, meaning two health professionals are fairly certain. But I haven't gone through the full barrage diagnosis and I'm still trying to decide if I should. 4 years of burn out suggests maybe?
I persevered despite the binary nature of the questions (which means you have to basically lie by saying never or always) and got 151, close to the mean score for autists. However, I only got 4 on language. This fits with my self-assessment: one reason I doubted that I could be autistic was my communication skill, and I still think it might prevent me getting a formal diagnosis. It's a special interest - I have developed my own language with non-European grammar and script...
I loved how you rationalized this, I said never true to many questions that I see differently now. Nevertheless, last time I checked, my score was 149. 😅😂
12:02 ‐ getting "highly confused" when interrupted. I'm troubled by the phrase "highly confused." No. I don't get "confused." But I often get "highly irritated" or "highly frustrated. " So I've always answered this "never". Should I be answering this differently? Thoughts?
Edit: if it's a complex problem I've put a lot of thought into, and am "in the zone" to solve it, I can have trouble getting back into the "groove" if interrupted, but it's STILL not confusing!
I often feel like I'm holding my breath if I get interrupted. Sometimes I discover I am ACTUALLY holding my breath, unconsciously! I remember what I was going to say and feel frustrated to not get there.
Thank you for all of your videos. They have been very helpful for me and my daughter.
Awwww thank you, Kajean!
These tests were very useful, thank you. Took the spectrum one and aspie one.
I scored 201. I quit a job soon after a boss told me I was disrespectful and even asked me if I was doing my job. I did not yet know that I was autistic. The part of the experience that was the most baffling, was that they wanted me to keep working and kept reprimanding me for not simply getting over it and coming back to work. I had a doctor’s note excusing me. Because of how it all happened, I quit right before the end of the mouth and therefore lost my health insurance immediately. The way I experienced it, I was bullied out, but I think they saw it as a genuinely warranted and helpful reprimand. It could have been as simple as going over situations to clarify things, but they chose to jump to conclusions about my character that were not true and deeply hurtful. They were quite overwhelmed with the work load I handed back to them. They should have considered actual evidence of my work and character before making such nasty allegations. Just because we are different, doesn’t mean we aren’t doing our job.
Thanks Mike
Thank YOU, Suzanne. 🧡
My neuropsychiatrist and I both know I'm Autistic AF. But my RAADS score doesn't adequately reflect this due to my half-century of masking.
Amazing! I had almost all of the exact same answers!
Thanks Mike! This will be a good start for me
I like the lighting of the room
I’ve done the RAADSR multiple times over the past few years and I’m consistently getting a score of 196.
Yes!
That questionnaire really needs a "what do you mean" or "question unclear" option.
4:35 I didn't learn "children should be seen and not heard" from adults, I learned it from my peers. Well, really it was more "Jon should be seen and not heard", my peers were fine with being heard.
14:05 ‐ re: the "Microfiber question." I literally shudder when I think about touching microfiber, but it didn't exist when I was younger. 😅
Have you ever tried those 100% nylon gym socks? Those were available in the 70s.
@@freecat1278 - ewwww. Thanks (not) for reminding me of those! My shoulders are now stuck up by my ears! 😅
I hate those squishmallows, I tried touching one once and it was rather unpleasant to say the least.
Questions, lol. Having lots of questions. I once had a tutor tell me (prior to diagnosis) that I was a divergent thinker and that we're difficult to teach, because we ask too many questions. I think it boils down to us not actually being slow learners, but deep learners. This means we do take longer but we need to know the whole subject for it to make sense, we end up being able to lecture on it.
The adhd psychiatrist I had was literally pulling his hair out, constantly reminding of how much we needed to get through and the time limit, he only does adhd and had been doing it decades, I felt I was a real challenge for him, lol.
23:52 this is crucial, if i have a script to follow i can do small talk, but i hate it so much.
It appears that this questionnaire is posing its questions in such a way that it is believed actually autistic people would be utterly incapable of answering! So many of these questions are about how other people perceive us. We're supposed to be rubbish at knowing what other people think. Indeed, how is anybody supposed to know these things?
It's an annoying test. As it turns out - I'm not that bad at reading the faces and body language of others and I'm sometimes told I see things that nobody else has. However, knowing how I am perceived is complete conjecture. Usually, unless somebody is trying to pretend they think of me a certain way but they're not very good at it.
Yes!
NT's also don't know how they are perceived. The difference is that they are perfectly fine with intuiting an answer (right or wrong) and believing it without question.
Would it not be even more rude to tell someone they are rude? Nobody around me would ever do that.
They kind of show it by disaproving looks, but would never say something.
While learning is a drug to me, I feel like all this is failing to teach me anything. No matter how well I learn to understand myself, it does not teach me to be a better person on the outside, it just point out that I'm always going to depend on the kindness of others and I'm not sure they are all that kind, since kindness mostly come at the cost of efficiency.
Over thinking the questions soo much I struggle to answer a couple of them.... 😊. 140 for me total score
Well done! I think the true test should be how deliberated the answers are!
@@Autistic_AFyes!!!
Helen, I do not call this overthinking. You are probably doing the appropriate amount of thinking for incredibly ambiguous questions. The NTs who write these tests have a very imprecise use of language, which is a shame because I presume they would like to design an accurate test.
@pardalote 😆 I hadn't thought of that 🤔
So relate. Used to use “I’ll be back” when I was in and out of patients rooms
Cool! ❤
Honestly, I'm not surprised. 45 years old hispanic male here.
Total:
185
Language subtotal:
13
Social relatedness subtotal:
92
Sensory/motor subtotal:
44
Circumscribed interests subtotal:
36
I got 112. Less than most people here, less than the average autistic person, but stll higher than the highest neurotypical person from the original study. I feel validated but not surprised.
I scored 187. I'm late undiagnosed. For fairness, I paused the video and did the test before watching, to avoid being influenced by your answers. Some of the questions were difficult as you mentioned, asking how other people see you, assumes possibly several people would have been forward enough to tell you honestly, or questions that seem to imply an extreme effect that I probably wouldn't have gone as far as if describing the degree of effect myself, so would that make it a 'Never True', I'm not sure, when it's true but to a lesser extent than suggested. The question "I am an understanding type of person" with such black and white options is quite bizarre. How do I gauge if I'm understanding or not in general?
I've done a number of variations on these kinds of online autism test going back about 15 years, and have always scored as 'Very Likely' on them. I should probably get a proper assessment for confirmation, but my life/work circumstances have made it possible to self-accommodate and have effectively zero support needs for the time being, so there hasn't been the impetus to go formal. Having zero support needs may mean I don't meet the criteria for a positive diagnosis anyway, though I'm not sure how that works because the variable luck of anyone's current circumstances doesn't change their fundamental brain wiring. Under different circumstances that I can imagine, I would definitely have a lot more difficulty.
Soft bee was adorable
I'd advise AFAB people to do the CAT-Q first. It worked much better for me.
I scored 186. I don't know if this score might have changed if I had selected "True Only Now" instead of "True now and when I was younger" for all of the ones that were true for me now. I don't remember much before adulthood. High school is a blur, and before that is basically only knowing if something happened but not actually remembering it. But, since I don't remember my childhood really at all, I can't honestly say if it is true only now or also when I was younger. That's the thing I dislike most about this test, though that's very specific to me-- I feel like I am lying no matter what I do, because I can't confirm the truth of either of those answers. But the ambiguity and broadness of most of the questions is also up there on the list of dislikes.
I find that I actually parse the phrasing of the question so much that it's hard for me to answer, such as question 8: "I only like to talk to people that share my special interest". I might like to talk to other people, but I might get bored easily...so it's the phrasing that gets me.
I scored 116, but actually my "social relatedness score" was only borderline (33, where the threshold is 31). I've always been a very social person - though admittedly when I was young, I didn't always realize when I was acting inappropriately. I think there's a stereotype that autistic people are also introverted and prefer alone-time, but that's never been me. I legit don't understand how some people can go days or weeks by themselves; if I got more than a day without a substantive conversation, I start talking to random people just to stop myself from spiralling into my own head.
I was recently diagnosed with autism. However, I had a few questions about the questions in the RAADS-R form for my psychologist, as I also have ADHD. I found it pretty difficult to give only one answer😄 Thanks for sharing - I'm looking forward to seeing more from you in 2025🎉
Yeah, some of the questions were ambiguous . . . . rather than whether I do this now and did it then or not, I felt it needed some sort of "how much so". I "fail" to be autistic on some of the compassion/empathy questions, probably because I am female and socialized to be a caretaker. I still scored high over all.
Yes, being female will bias the masked traits scores lower. It's a double-whammy.
I'm a 63- year old woman and scored 128 on RADS-R but 139 on CAT-Q which accounts for masking. You might want to try the CAT-Q as well.
I'm going to watch this, and will re-take the test after watching.
Edit: scored 148 when I don't take things so literal (ha!). So a difference of 20 points. Significant.
ok ok ok one more... pain. I had my teeth knocked out at work, and it literally didn't bother me. Dentist cleaning? Even after being numbed? Absolute Hell.
I’m watching the video because I wanted to see how much you got on the test XD. I got a really high score that my autistic friends haven’t been able to meet.
14:42 - getting "extremely upset" when the way I do things is suddenly changed. Again, I have an issue with the wording. How do you define "extremely"? What if I don't get upset but I get frustrated or unsure of how to react? Is that the same thing as upset? What if I get moderately upset? How do I answer?
Aaaaaargh.
A test rewrite is well overdue. It is time to get Autistic people writing or at least editing it.
I know I get very internally irritated beyond what is probably healthy when my morning routine to make my breakfast is interrupted by having to share the kitchen. I do think so much of the wording is just done by NT people who likely only see what we may outwardly present and how it might be a problem to them, versus what we feel inside.
41 has confused tf outta me since I first took the RAADS-R 11 months ago. I can't even articulate what confuses me about it without needing to write a 3 page rambling essay.
On that basis, I think I probably need to not bother trying to explain what I'm confused about, and answer "now and when I was young" lol.
(but for the record, I think what I'm trying to figure out is what they mean by "being interested" in something versus what they mean by "what is useful"... as well as "well, do I answer 'now and when I was young' if I JUST like keeping lists of things that I'm interested in that happen to have practical uses? I'm generally not interested in anything that doesn't have some kind of practical outcome.")
(... so yeah, I just sigh and answer "both now and when I was young" but it BOTHERS ME an AWFUL LOT that the question is phrased the way it is)
And I don't know how to answer 61. When I was a kid, I didn't *want* to be a loner, but lots of other kids didn't like me and I went to school across town so my friends didn't live close enough to see them outside of school unless arrangements had been made with parents (small enough town that the little public transit that existed wasn't really suitable). When I was a teen, I lived in a city; I had more friends, but we mostly lived far-flung from the school and didn't have a lot of free time outside of extracurriculars. After I moved out, I had more opportunity to choose to be with friends but generally didn't feel like my boyfriend wanted to spend time with them and it somehow became difficult to hang out with anyone outside of school/work hours. Once I became a mother, I was extremely isolated (even after I divorced my husband), and it didn't take many years before I felt extremely comfortable not spending time with people. When Covid showed up, I was 47, and I was extremely happy with life becoming simplified, socially/expectation-wise (though I was quite distressed with the situation outside of the walls of my house). And since early 2022, I've lived entirely on my own, live far away from my family, and have continued Covid precautions meaning that I mostly don't participate in non-essential activities and when I *do* do something that involves sharing air, I wear my N95. I'm uninterested in participating in a society that abandons its vulnerable, and espouses eugenic norms. I'm disabled enough as it is (technically for depression; I'm only recently self-dx'd with autism); I don't need to roll the dice for the ridiculously long list of Covid sequelae over and over, which could take the things I love doing away from me (especially living in a wood-heated rural home with no support system beyond my therapist). And I don't feel lonely at all. I'm bizarrely happy/contented with the incredible peace that abandoning the effort to Do Stuff Like A Normal Person enables for me.
so... am I a loner? I wouldn't have said so until recently in my life, and even now probably only because of Covid. And if anyone called me a loner earlier in my life, it would just have been one of those baseless insults mean people say about people they don't like; I was always desperately trying to navigate juggling friendships. If I *wanted* close friendships but circumstances (including possibly autism, of course) frequently made it a challenge, was I a loner?
idk.
And question 71 makes me want to scream lol. Are they asking do you specifically like to have people over for supper, and do you enjoy the conversation around the table? Or is it do you like to spend time with friends and family (ie, do you like talking with them, do you like having them over for a meal, etc)? It's not worded in a way that I'm confident that I know what they're asking. Because on top of that I don't know how to answer whether I enjoy it or not.
I do?
But.
There are all kinds of qualifiers to that, that mean maybe I shouldn't answer it affirmatively.
My Score was:
Total: 178
Language: 12
Social Relatedness: 76
Sensory/motor: 54
Circumscribed Interests: 36
Oh yes, I remember doing the tests during my self identification journey a few years ago, and so for many of the questions, my answers had caveats, or I wanted further information. That should be part of the scoring 😂
So many of these questions require an outside perspective, such as talking TOO loud. Almost as though one might be expected to have the trust in others to offer such a perspective, and believe they're communicating an unsolicited opinion (and not being mean or exercising some form of manipulation). Hmmm. ;-)
I scored 35, I am very sensitive to lights, sounds, people in my personal space and stuff like that.
Some observations:
- "It's difficult to figure out what other people expect of me" definetly true in my childhood. Well, it was true until I got out of school, so until I was 18. So the most accurate answer is c, I guess? I don't feel like I changed, I'm in a better environment with different people and I stopped taking shit from people.
- "I don't like to be hugged or held" true when I was young for some reason. I don't know why, and again I don't think the point it changed was exactly around 16 y/o.
- Who can tolerate things they dislike? I mean it depends on how strongly you dislike it, but waving food in front of me that I hate the taste and smell of certainly upsets me? I feel like that's a very human experience, no?
- "I enjoy spending time eating and talking with my family and friends" depends on the people, was less true when I was younger, because I didn't have cool friends and at family dinner I'd get asked about school and that upset me. Why do these questions depend on other people so much?
- "The same sound sometimes seems very loud or very soft, even though I know it has not changed" I said no, but that's kinda how stress works. Like when I'm more stressed my sensory overload get's worse and triggers more easily. So in a way that's true for everyone technically?
- "I keep my thoughts stacked in my memory like they are on filing cards" what the heck does that mean? xD
- "It calms me to spin around or to rock in a chair when I'm feeling stressed" I had intense anxiety issues so after I learned about stimming I actually started doing that consciously to calm me down. Worked really great for me.
- "I usually speak in a normal tone" What's a normal tone? I don't really hear myself so how am I supposed to tell?
- "Sometimes things that should feel painful are not (for instance when I hurt myself or burn my hand on the stove)" very much agree that you should see a doctor if an x degree burn doesn't hurt lol
- "I can chat and make small talk with people" social anxiety said no, and I don't like small talk generally. Let's just talk about something interesting, not the weather.
- "I have never been interested in what most of the people I know consider interesting" I now surround myself with people who share my interests? Again, at school I couldn't choose and was too afraid to walk up to the boys cause that was kinda taboo and I didn't understand why.
- "I try to be as helpful as I can when other people tell me their personal problems" I think I understand what they mean. But sometimes just listening and affirming is very helpful, so I do that.
- "I feel very comfortable with dating or being in social situations with others" Who feels "very comftable" on a first date??? Who?!?!?! No introvert would answer yes I think.
- "I cannot tell when someone is flirting with me" lol I'm asexual and yes the whole thing was a mystery to me until I learned about it. It freaked me out xD
- "The phrase 'I've got you under my skin' makes me uncomfortable" whoever invented that phrase is a psychopath.
- "I speak with a normal rhythm" how do I tell? What's a "normal" rythm?
- "I have never wanted or needed to have what other people call an 'intimate relationship.'" What about aromantic or asexual people? Or just "late bloomers"?
- "Meeting new people is usually easy for me" social anxiety, so back then definetly not!
- "Others consider me odd or different" That definetly was the case back then. I did consider the other people to be odd too sooo there's that.
- "I focus on details rather than the overall idea" Honestly I don't know. At work I focus on both at different times?
- "I am often surprised when others tell me I have been rude" I know what I did, and I'm not sorry :D
I just took it. I was surprised that I did score 159, so borderline strong evidence of autism. I have ADHD and only realized I was heavily masking in the last couple years, so I was sort of shocked how high my score was 🤣
jokes on you i got admitted and the psychiatry fellas diagnosed me instead, didn't even have to study for the test i aced it 😎
I am curious if the texture of fish puts you off the way other meats do since it is quite it's own thing.