Monotropism: single attention and associated cognition in autism
June 1, 2024 5:52 AM Subscribe
“Me and monotropism : a unified theory of autism,” suggests that attentional differences explain not only the diagnostic criteria for autism, but better yet, they explain the internal phenomenology: inertia, sensory and social overload and insensitivity, stimming, and particularly hyperfocus and intense interest.
Test yourself here.
Test yourself here.
Boo, I have scored 4.52, now they'll never give me Adderall.
posted by mittens at 6:04 AM on June 1 [6 favorites]
posted by mittens at 6:04 AM on June 1 [6 favorites]
The journal article he references is also interesting.
“The authors propose that the strategies employed for the allocation of attention are normally distributed and to a large degree genetically determined. We propose that diagnosis of autism selects those few individuals at the deep or tight-focus extreme of this distribution of strategies. Furthermore the authors propose that social interactions, the use of language, and the shifting of the object of attention are all tasks that require broadly distributed attention. Consequently these activities are inhibited by the canalization of available attention into a few highly aroused interests.”posted by anotherpanacea at 6:08 AM on June 1 [2 favorites]
Man I’m having such a quartz of course moment. (I’m a researcher in this field and I always forget stuff 6 yrs old that is basically integral to my worldview now is not common knowledge. Me and monotropism indeed)
Uhh how to summarize. Typing on my phone while eating breakfast so this may be a bit messy. Also bear in mind I haven’t read the original article in a hot minute so this is based on the developing research since then. Basically it’s about attention processing. Autistic brains are really good at focusing on one or two things in detail and get overwhelmed when they have to process a bunch of things concurrently.
Social interaction involves processing a ton of information concurrently. Gaze, tone, expression, etc. Autistic people tend to be better at one on one interaction than in groups (which require even more concurrent information processing). However most social interaction starts in groups. You don’t typically interact with someone one on one right off the bat, or if you do it’s usually in a public place that’s sensorily overwhelming. And if you’re bad at interacting in groups then you rarely get to the one on one situation which means you either get less chance to learn or degrade in practice. So that explains the social stuff. The other half of the autism criteria is restricted and repetitive interests which should follow from “autistic brains prefer focusing on the details of one thing” so not sure if that needs more explanation? Lmk.
The article that anotherpanacea linked, this is an application of the Broader Autism Phenotype which we observe in family members of autistic individuals, where they have similar traits even if they don’t qualify for a diagnosis. Many researchers believe that autistic traits are just a part of human experience and what we call ASD is a certain cluster and intensity. So yeah that’s just a specific example of what the BAP research has been concluding for autism more broadly.
Anyway I’ll probably have thoughts on the measure when I can take a look but if you have questions about the concept AMA.
posted by brook horse at 6:52 AM on June 1 [45 favorites]
Uhh how to summarize. Typing on my phone while eating breakfast so this may be a bit messy. Also bear in mind I haven’t read the original article in a hot minute so this is based on the developing research since then. Basically it’s about attention processing. Autistic brains are really good at focusing on one or two things in detail and get overwhelmed when they have to process a bunch of things concurrently.
Social interaction involves processing a ton of information concurrently. Gaze, tone, expression, etc. Autistic people tend to be better at one on one interaction than in groups (which require even more concurrent information processing). However most social interaction starts in groups. You don’t typically interact with someone one on one right off the bat, or if you do it’s usually in a public place that’s sensorily overwhelming. And if you’re bad at interacting in groups then you rarely get to the one on one situation which means you either get less chance to learn or degrade in practice. So that explains the social stuff. The other half of the autism criteria is restricted and repetitive interests which should follow from “autistic brains prefer focusing on the details of one thing” so not sure if that needs more explanation? Lmk.
The article that anotherpanacea linked, this is an application of the Broader Autism Phenotype which we observe in family members of autistic individuals, where they have similar traits even if they don’t qualify for a diagnosis. Many researchers believe that autistic traits are just a part of human experience and what we call ASD is a certain cluster and intensity. So yeah that’s just a specific example of what the BAP research has been concluding for autism more broadly.
Anyway I’ll probably have thoughts on the measure when I can take a look but if you have questions about the concept AMA.
posted by brook horse at 6:52 AM on June 1 [45 favorites]
Okay actually I missed explaining the interest part entirely. Autistic brains are very good at paying attention to things they’re interested in and very bad at things they’re not. This is not even in a “this bored me so I’ll ignore it” way but that it processes really only the information relevant to the interest, which leads to missing a whole bunch of other stuff. Unless of course the outside stuff is too demanding, in which case you can’t process anything at all. So you’re either entirely hyperfocused and ignoring everything around you, or you can’t even engage with your interest because you are not capable of shutting out the other information.
posted by brook horse at 6:57 AM on June 1 [28 favorites]
posted by brook horse at 6:57 AM on June 1 [28 favorites]
Hey, brook horse, if I want to cry from recognition and exhaustion while taking this quiz, I probably ought to pay attention to that?
More seriously, is this...not the set of experiences that neurotypical people have? Lots of this describes me. But how far off is this from NT experience?
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:59 AM on June 1 [14 favorites]
More seriously, is this...not the set of experiences that neurotypical people have? Lots of this describes me. But how far off is this from NT experience?
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:59 AM on June 1 [14 favorites]
3.64 here.
It would be interesting to see how this applies to ADHD. Sometimes I have that hyperfocus, shutting everything out. Sometimes I'm concentrating and [i]want[/i] to shut everything out and get annoyed by anything that tries to divide my attention. But other times I just can't keep focused on one thing, I have to follow every tangent of possibility, or flit around and check in with everything else around me, or I have to physically get up and move somewhere and do something else for a moment.
posted by Foosnark at 7:08 AM on June 1 [16 favorites]
It would be interesting to see how this applies to ADHD. Sometimes I have that hyperfocus, shutting everything out. Sometimes I'm concentrating and [i]want[/i] to shut everything out and get annoyed by anything that tries to divide my attention. But other times I just can't keep focused on one thing, I have to follow every tangent of possibility, or flit around and check in with everything else around me, or I have to physically get up and move somewhere and do something else for a moment.
posted by Foosnark at 7:08 AM on June 1 [16 favorites]
I got 4.34.
Hmm.
It would be interesting to see how this applies to ADHD.
AFAIK, this experience of hyperfocus is also a known symptom of ADHD. My partner has ADHD (diagnosed) and I believe I'm probably autistic (waiting until I can afford a private diagnosis to get confirmation). We trade off talking to each other about our hyperfixations of the moment, though he's still practicing not interrupting me when he needs to talk about it and I'm desperately trying to tune out the world.
posted by fight or flight at 7:16 AM on June 1 [5 favorites]
Hmm.
It would be interesting to see how this applies to ADHD.
AFAIK, this experience of hyperfocus is also a known symptom of ADHD. My partner has ADHD (diagnosed) and I believe I'm probably autistic (waiting until I can afford a private diagnosis to get confirmation). We trade off talking to each other about our hyperfixations of the moment, though he's still practicing not interrupting me when he needs to talk about it and I'm desperately trying to tune out the world.
posted by fight or flight at 7:16 AM on June 1 [5 favorites]
4.00, and I think I should get extra points because I kept wondering “wait, how do we draw the line between ‘agree’ and ‘strongly agree’?”
posted by madcaptenor at 7:34 AM on June 1 [16 favorites]
posted by madcaptenor at 7:34 AM on June 1 [16 favorites]
4.23 AuADHD and it's - I love routines! I cannot sustain a routine! It is pretty tough.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 7:35 AM on June 1 [27 favorites]
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 7:35 AM on June 1 [27 favorites]
I get a lot of “no, because I compensate like hell” mixed in with that.
posted by Artw at 7:35 AM on June 1 [31 favorites]
posted by Artw at 7:35 AM on June 1 [31 favorites]
4.23 AuADHD and it's - I love routines! I cannot sustain a routine! It is pretty tough.
"I love routines! I cannot sustain a routine!" Should the name of my memoir.
posted by wellifyouinsist at 7:43 AM on June 1 [30 favorites]
"I love routines! I cannot sustain a routine!" Should the name of my memoir.
posted by wellifyouinsist at 7:43 AM on June 1 [30 favorites]
More seriously, is this...not the set of experiences that neurotypical people have? Lots of this describes me. But how far off is this from NT experience?
Nope. I took the test as a fairly neurotypical person (I have severe anxiety but it's not tied up with autism or ADHD) and scored firmly on the left of the NT curve.
posted by cooker girl at 7:55 AM on June 1 [13 favorites]
Nope. I took the test as a fairly neurotypical person (I have severe anxiety but it's not tied up with autism or ADHD) and scored firmly on the left of the NT curve.
posted by cooker girl at 7:55 AM on June 1 [13 favorites]
I would answer many of these questions differently depending on the precise circumstances. I'm a storyboard artist, so helpful suggestions from other people is intrinsic to that creative work but if I'm cooking, DO NOT interrupt/distract me with helpful suggestions. I gave up because it was too long and felt like it was figuring out my sun sign.
posted by brachiopod at 7:57 AM on June 1 [2 favorites]
posted by brachiopod at 7:57 AM on June 1 [2 favorites]
2.24, which is good for me because I am often surrounded by chaos.
posted by fimbulvetr at 8:04 AM on June 1 [3 favorites]
posted by fimbulvetr at 8:04 AM on June 1 [3 favorites]
mittens: I got a 4.19 and I'm on ADHD meds for severe ADHD (I also have autism. They frequently have cage matches in my head.) So, yeah.
The most helpful thing I've learned lately (comments from brook horse are absolutely welcome!) is that autism has a large executive (dis)function component, and ADHD is basically an executive function disorder that is existing on its own with no other cause. Lot's of things can cause the disregulated attention you see in ADHD -- PTSD definitely does, for instance, and so and important part of an ADHD assessment to rule out something else causing it. Part of my autism assessment was a re-examining of my ADHD symptoms to see if they were being caused by the autism, or if their particular characteristics meant that they were in addition to the executive function problems caused by the autism. (In my case they found I definitely have both.)
Another helpful thing I learned -- that I wish someone had pointed out years earlier -- was that if you have ADHD and you also have social anxiety symptoms or other social difficulties, you should be assessed for autism. Social anxiety (or rejection sensitive dysphoria) is not a given with ADHD, and needs to be separately assessed since autism is a common co-morbidity. It turns out I didn't fail therapy when I tried cognitive behavioral therapy for social anxiety and it made things worse for me. It's just that that particular therapy usually doesn't work when you have autism, and I had no idea I had autism.
posted by antinomia at 8:04 AM on June 1 [14 favorites]
The most helpful thing I've learned lately (comments from brook horse are absolutely welcome!) is that autism has a large executive (dis)function component, and ADHD is basically an executive function disorder that is existing on its own with no other cause. Lot's of things can cause the disregulated attention you see in ADHD -- PTSD definitely does, for instance, and so and important part of an ADHD assessment to rule out something else causing it. Part of my autism assessment was a re-examining of my ADHD symptoms to see if they were being caused by the autism, or if their particular characteristics meant that they were in addition to the executive function problems caused by the autism. (In my case they found I definitely have both.)
Another helpful thing I learned -- that I wish someone had pointed out years earlier -- was that if you have ADHD and you also have social anxiety symptoms or other social difficulties, you should be assessed for autism. Social anxiety (or rejection sensitive dysphoria) is not a given with ADHD, and needs to be separately assessed since autism is a common co-morbidity. It turns out I didn't fail therapy when I tried cognitive behavioral therapy for social anxiety and it made things worse for me. It's just that that particular therapy usually doesn't work when you have autism, and I had no idea I had autism.
posted by antinomia at 8:04 AM on June 1 [14 favorites]
A lot of these questions do seem pretty ... just human. I know it's a trope to say, oh, doesn't everyone feel this way when in fact they do not, but concepts like "I often engage in activities I am passionate about to escape from anxiety", "When I am interested in something, I tend to be passionate about it", "I sometimes focus on an incident for a substantial time (days) after the event" or "When there is a lot of information to consider, I often struggle to make a decision" seem like pretty common experiences of being alive in 2024.
That's not to say there aren't differences between people and matters of degree, but it feels pretty reductive to say some people are like this and other people are like that and these are two fundamentally different kinds of people. It feels like maybe the end of this train of thought is just dividing the world into neurodivergent people and sociopaths with nothing in between.
posted by ssg at 8:08 AM on June 1 [3 favorites]
That's not to say there aren't differences between people and matters of degree, but it feels pretty reductive to say some people are like this and other people are like that and these are two fundamentally different kinds of people. It feels like maybe the end of this train of thought is just dividing the world into neurodivergent people and sociopaths with nothing in between.
posted by ssg at 8:08 AM on June 1 [3 favorites]
Personally I find one-on-one conversation really difficult, and 3-5 people is the sweet spot (but if the group gets big enough that a secondary conversation starts up in the room, I can't pay attention to either).
My autistic interaction challenges definitely fit the "tennis" model -- where a conversation is supposed to be like a game of tennis with the ball going smoothly back and forth between people. If I'm only talking to one person I keep dropping the ball (can't think of what to say next) or I start juggling the ball on my side of the net (if we've hit a special interest topic and I can't shut up). If there's a third or fourth person in the conversation, then it's like playing doubles tennis when you're not so good a player -- the other person can pick up the slack so that ball can keep going back and forth over the net.
posted by antinomia at 8:14 AM on June 1 [6 favorites]
My autistic interaction challenges definitely fit the "tennis" model -- where a conversation is supposed to be like a game of tennis with the ball going smoothly back and forth between people. If I'm only talking to one person I keep dropping the ball (can't think of what to say next) or I start juggling the ball on my side of the net (if we've hit a special interest topic and I can't shut up). If there's a third or fourth person in the conversation, then it's like playing doubles tennis when you're not so good a player -- the other person can pick up the slack so that ball can keep going back and forth over the net.
posted by antinomia at 8:14 AM on June 1 [6 favorites]
As an autistic person, this is the best explanation for how autism works I have read so far. My score was 4.21.
posted by GiantSlug at 8:25 AM on June 1 [9 favorites]
posted by GiantSlug at 8:25 AM on June 1 [9 favorites]
“The authors propose that the strategies employed for the allocation of attention are normally distributed and to a large degree genetically determined.
So the strategies are normally distributed? What could that possibly mean? There’s literally no bound on the distribution of strategies?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 8:25 AM on June 1
So the strategies are normally distributed? What could that possibly mean? There’s literally no bound on the distribution of strategies?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 8:25 AM on June 1
ssg, please be careful about tossing the word sociopath (or psychopath) into a discussion about autism. It's a common misconception that people with autism don't have empathy, and it's based on early studies carried out by neurotypical scientists on autistic children (so there was misinterpretation of study materials, children don't always question adults when things seem confusing or wrong, etc.).
Now that many adults are being diagnosed our voices are finally being added to the research, and many of us actually empathize so deeply with the other person that we get overwhelmed and can shut down or become non-verbal (this happens to me). And for some of us we have trouble making the right face or conjuring the right tone of voice to match the reaction we're feeling inside and things can come out as patronizing or dismissing, etc., when that is not at all what we feel (which contributes to the tendency to shut down when you fear this happening). And we're just more likely to be so wrapped up in whatever is going on in our head that we fail to notice that you're trying to drag a bunch of heavy bags out the door or some such -- but we would totally want to help if we did notice.
posted by antinomia at 8:31 AM on June 1 [20 favorites]
Now that many adults are being diagnosed our voices are finally being added to the research, and many of us actually empathize so deeply with the other person that we get overwhelmed and can shut down or become non-verbal (this happens to me). And for some of us we have trouble making the right face or conjuring the right tone of voice to match the reaction we're feeling inside and things can come out as patronizing or dismissing, etc., when that is not at all what we feel (which contributes to the tendency to shut down when you fear this happening). And we're just more likely to be so wrapped up in whatever is going on in our head that we fail to notice that you're trying to drag a bunch of heavy bags out the door or some such -- but we would totally want to help if we did notice.
posted by antinomia at 8:31 AM on June 1 [20 favorites]
MisantropicPainforest, they mean attention follows a "normal distribution", so a hill-shaped distribution if you graph the data. I can see how their choice of words doesn't really help with clarity :/
posted by antinomia at 8:35 AM on June 1
posted by antinomia at 8:35 AM on June 1
antinomia, I think ssg was equating neurotypical people with the sociopathic end of things, not neurodivergent people 🙂
posted by Zumbador at 8:35 AM on June 1 [5 favorites]
posted by Zumbador at 8:35 AM on June 1 [5 favorites]
I am dead center median on the autistic bell curve, which is a lovely feeling that I never get to have. I’m completely average within my type! Excellent. n=4.19
posted by Callisto Prime at 8:43 AM on June 1 [3 favorites]
posted by Callisto Prime at 8:43 AM on June 1 [3 favorites]
A lot of these questions do seem pretty ... just human.
Yes, and once the submit button is pressed on that quiz a chart is displayed showing how the scores tend to be distributed among autistic and allistic people. The former average just above four and are more narrowly distributed around there, and the latter average just above and are more widely distribute across the chart. It's not a binary thing whereby autistic and allistic people do not ever share the same experiences and traits.
My understanding is this is not a diagnostic test for autism, and people who are autistic or not may well score the same. The effect has to do with the larger population.
This can make it challenging to explain autism (and ADHD for similar reasons). If I say "it's hard having to talk about things I'm not interested in", and someone says "yeah no one likes boring conversations", it's hard for me to explain the difference in intensity and how frequently I'm dealing with intensely non-interesting conversations. Also the social niceties. I put on a good act. I think obsessively about ensuring I make other people feel comfortable (there's "socialized as a woman" for you...) I'm definitely not supposed to say that I don't care about most of the "normal things" people talk about. People take this as "I don't care about you", which is untrue.
posted by lookoutbelow at 8:44 AM on June 1 [20 favorites]
Yes, and once the submit button is pressed on that quiz a chart is displayed showing how the scores tend to be distributed among autistic and allistic people. The former average just above four and are more narrowly distributed around there, and the latter average just above and are more widely distribute across the chart. It's not a binary thing whereby autistic and allistic people do not ever share the same experiences and traits.
My understanding is this is not a diagnostic test for autism, and people who are autistic or not may well score the same. The effect has to do with the larger population.
This can make it challenging to explain autism (and ADHD for similar reasons). If I say "it's hard having to talk about things I'm not interested in", and someone says "yeah no one likes boring conversations", it's hard for me to explain the difference in intensity and how frequently I'm dealing with intensely non-interesting conversations. Also the social niceties. I put on a good act. I think obsessively about ensuring I make other people feel comfortable (there's "socialized as a woman" for you...) I'm definitely not supposed to say that I don't care about most of the "normal things" people talk about. People take this as "I don't care about you", which is untrue.
posted by lookoutbelow at 8:44 AM on June 1 [20 favorites]
The test seems like it's designed to get people to identify as autistic, like, the majority of the questions will be answered in such a way as to land on the neurodiverse side of the scale by the majority of people.
Where is the reliability and validity here? Doesn't it matter? I wish pseudoscience wouldn't get this kind of attention, nor taken this seriously. Like I get it, taking a quiz and finding out where we land on a scale is fun! But this isn't any more valid than a Buzzfeed quiz to test which Game of Thrones character I am.
posted by MiraK at 8:45 AM on June 1 [11 favorites]
Where is the reliability and validity here? Doesn't it matter? I wish pseudoscience wouldn't get this kind of attention, nor taken this seriously. Like I get it, taking a quiz and finding out where we land on a scale is fun! But this isn't any more valid than a Buzzfeed quiz to test which Game of Thrones character I am.
posted by MiraK at 8:45 AM on June 1 [11 favorites]
Autistic just above 4, allistic just above 3, I meant to say.
posted by lookoutbelow at 8:49 AM on June 1
posted by lookoutbelow at 8:49 AM on June 1
3.63, and I agree strongly with Foosnark
It's interesting but I've learned to be suspicious of models like this or Myers-Briggs, and like tests for the latter my antennae tell me I'm being steered.
I have deliberately taught myself out of, or avoid situations/contexts involving several of those questions, where my selection for one extreme would've been the other extreme had I not forced myself to change.
posted by unearthed at 8:54 AM on June 1 [6 favorites]
It's interesting but I've learned to be suspicious of models like this or Myers-Briggs, and like tests for the latter my antennae tell me I'm being steered.
I have deliberately taught myself out of, or avoid situations/contexts involving several of those questions, where my selection for one extreme would've been the other extreme had I not forced myself to change.
posted by unearthed at 8:54 AM on June 1 [6 favorites]
Ah, Zumbador, you are right! ... uhm.. but now it's my turn to be confused, I guess.
posted by antinomia at 8:55 AM on June 1 [1 favorite]
posted by antinomia at 8:55 AM on June 1 [1 favorite]
Where is the reliability and validity here? Doesn't it matter?
The authors of the questionnaire do have a preprint if you’re interested. They do more or less what I’d expect to see in validating a new questionnaire, although I admit I don’t spend that much time in this corner of statistical practice. I can see some steps they haven’t done, like assessing whether the factor structure is invariant across subgroups of interest (gender? Although given the higher prevalence of gender atypicality in autism that could get kind of weedy). Maybe that’s the next paper though.
Looks like the preprint was out something like a year ago and it hasn’t been accepted in a peer reviewed outlet AFAICT. Hard to read the tea leaves about that; psychology journals IME take for freaking ever to go through the review process.
I dunno; grains of salt seem appropriate but I wouldn’t write this off. I agree with the linked essay that cognitive-style explanations of autism (of which this is one) have the possibility of explaining the social differences whereas it’s not obvious to me that the converse is true. My $0.02 (as someone in a BAP-like family).
posted by eirias at 9:03 AM on June 1 [5 favorites]
The authors of the questionnaire do have a preprint if you’re interested. They do more or less what I’d expect to see in validating a new questionnaire, although I admit I don’t spend that much time in this corner of statistical practice. I can see some steps they haven’t done, like assessing whether the factor structure is invariant across subgroups of interest (gender? Although given the higher prevalence of gender atypicality in autism that could get kind of weedy). Maybe that’s the next paper though.
Looks like the preprint was out something like a year ago and it hasn’t been accepted in a peer reviewed outlet AFAICT. Hard to read the tea leaves about that; psychology journals IME take for freaking ever to go through the review process.
I dunno; grains of salt seem appropriate but I wouldn’t write this off. I agree with the linked essay that cognitive-style explanations of autism (of which this is one) have the possibility of explaining the social differences whereas it’s not obvious to me that the converse is true. My $0.02 (as someone in a BAP-like family).
posted by eirias at 9:03 AM on June 1 [5 favorites]
Hey, brook horse, if I want to cry from recognition and exhaustion while taking this quiz, I probably ought to pay attention to that?
More seriously, is this...not the set of experiences that neurotypical people have? Lots of this describes me. But how far off is this from NT experience?
I think your reaction answers the question—you probably wouldn’t feel like that if this weren’t hitting on things you feel like you’ve been doing wrong, because this is not how allistic people generally process the world.
The measure absolutely contains things that allistic people (using this specifically because non-autistic doesn’t mean neurotypical) experience. Many of them, in fact. That’s the whole point of “it’s just human traits clustering a certain way.” But if you are finding yourself on the “strongly agree” side of the majority of the questions, then you are experiencing something that is not typical. Here are some questions and practical examples of how this is not typical:
“I need a quiet and predictable environment for me to switch from one task to another easily.”
If this were usually the case for everyone, stores and restaurants and waiting rooms would not always be playing music, or we would hear a lot more constant complaining about it. Your average person is not bothered by this and may even enjoy it. There may be times or contexts where they don’t like it, but as a general rule this is not a daily frustration.
“It's distressing to be unexpectedly pulled away from something I'm engaged in.”
Most workplaces, whether due to job responsibilities or the way people socialize, require this repeatedly. People may be frustrated or annoyed by it but they don’t experience it as significantly distressing. When I worked in an office with primarily non-autistic people they would interrupt each other to chat constantly. And while this was sometimes unwelcome, it usually was enjoyed and repeatedly engaged in by both parties. If they had a deadline or were REALLY FOCUSED, maybe they’d be upset by it, but simply having to step away from something they were engaged in did not rise above the level of “minor annoyance” on most occasions.
“Routines provide an important source of stability and safety.”
Many people appreciate routines and find them helpful. But they do not feel unsafe if their routine were disrupted. Your average individual is able to sleep in a hotel without feeling their sense of internal safety and security is compromised; it may be more stressful to have routines disrupted when you travel but it does not feel inherently destabilizing to the point that it significantly restricts your travel. My non-autistic friends generally travel cross country for a week at least once a year, with a handful of smaller trips in between. I can manage an in-state trip of a few nights about once a year, and a cross-country trip once every 5.
Of course, there are allistic people who would mark “strongly agree” on these questions. Everyone has their quirks and preferences and some of them will have these traits without being autistic, but if the majority of them are, yeah, that means something.
But regardless of whether it “is” or “isn’t” ASD, knowing that your brain processes information in this way is helpful for adapting your life to accommodate it, rather than beating your head against allistic standards of living that don’t work with your highl monotropic tendencies. You don’t need to answer any kind of diagnostic question to start making changes that align with this kind of thinking.
It would be interesting to see how this applies to ADHD.
A lot of overlap; the primary difference is ADHD brains often also have times where they crave that multiple cones of attention stimulation. Autistic people have this much more rarely. I don’t know if anyone has research whether this only applies to hyperactive ADHD or if it also does for inattentive though. But yeah, autism and ADHD overlap is significant and this is one of the primary areas in which they do. I need to poke at the paper to see if they talked about discriminative validity, but this is very early stages validation research so it makes sense if they haven’t yet.
Though for context, my partner and I are both autistic and ADHD, but have always said I’m more autistic and they’re more ADHD. They got more monotropic than 12% of autistic people and 83% of allistic people; I got more monotropic than 88% of autistic people and 100% of allistic people. So that tracked for us.
"I love routines! I cannot sustain a routine!" Should the name of my memoir.
This is absolutely not a cure-all but I really like Routinery and Brili for help with this. I still have to… start the routine… and not ignore all the notifications… but once I’m in there it’s pretty good, especially now that Routinery uses the “live events” feature on my phone to show me a ticking timer on my lock screen.
autism has a large executive (dis)function component, and ADHD is basically an executive function disorder that is existing on its own with no other cause.
Slight tweak to how I would describe this. Autism and ADHD are both developmental disorders; ADHD primarily (but not exclusively) affects the development of executive functioning skills, while autism can (but does not primarily) affect the development of executive functioning skills. This is somewhat semantics and somewhat important to remembering that neither autism nor ADHD are distinct “things” and are just the manifestation of the brain and body taking many different pathways across development.
That's not to say there aren't differences between people and matters of degree, but it feels pretty reductive to say some people are like this and other people are like that and these are two fundamentally different kinds of people. It feels like maybe the end of this train of thought is just dividing the world into neurodivergent people and sociopaths with nothing in between.
The entire point of the test is to say the only the differences in degree matter. The researcher’s proposal is that these are human traits that everyone experiences, and a certain cluster and degree of them is what we associate with autism. If you take the measure it shows you the distribution curve of their validation study (which I need to look into the details of more, but does exist on SOME sample of allistics vs autistics) allistic people can and do score all the way to 5 on the measure, but most of them score around 3. Which means they probably click “neither agree nor disagree” or “agree” to most questions.
It would be a terrible psychological test if your average human being would click “disagree” on everything because it would be way too specific. Most people are going to say “slightly agree” or “agree” to a large chunk of questions on the MMPI. It’s that plus the amount of questions you “strongly agree” to, and specific questions which are typically only agreed to by highly mentally ill individuals, that go into the score.
Have you ever been screened for depression by your PCP? I usually answer “several days in the past two weeks” for 3 out of 5 of the questions. Which is, as she described once, “exactly the normal amount” because human beings will experience transient symptoms of depression as part of being alive even outside of [gestures at global anything]. So yeah, a bunch of these questions are about simply being human, and the degree is what matters.
The test seems like it's designed to get people to identify as autistic, like, the majority of the questions will be answered in such a way as to land on the neurodiverse side of the scale by the majority of people. Where is the reliability and validity here? Doesn't it matter? I wish pseudoscience wouldn't get this kind of attention.
I assess autism professionally; I took the measure picturing my typical “so you’re a little introverted and eccentric but probably wouldn’t wouldn’t qualify for a diagnosis of autism (but autistic resources might help you)” individual. This involved saying “agree” to a LOT of the questions. The answer I got was “you are more monotropic than 1% of autistic people people and 12% of allistic people.” I actually thought I had leaned too hard into broader autism phenotype traits and was going to get a “yeah you’re as monotropic as your average autistic person” but I didn’t. So whatever it looks like on the front end, how it’s scored definitely does not do that.
See above on how the distribution actually fell as well; they tested it on allistics and got a bunch who scored along a range that is different from what autistic people score. So no, it doesn’t make most people score “as autistic” (which is also not how the test is interpreted).
posted by brook horse at 9:07 AM on June 1 [45 favorites]
More seriously, is this...not the set of experiences that neurotypical people have? Lots of this describes me. But how far off is this from NT experience?
I think your reaction answers the question—you probably wouldn’t feel like that if this weren’t hitting on things you feel like you’ve been doing wrong, because this is not how allistic people generally process the world.
The measure absolutely contains things that allistic people (using this specifically because non-autistic doesn’t mean neurotypical) experience. Many of them, in fact. That’s the whole point of “it’s just human traits clustering a certain way.” But if you are finding yourself on the “strongly agree” side of the majority of the questions, then you are experiencing something that is not typical. Here are some questions and practical examples of how this is not typical:
“I need a quiet and predictable environment for me to switch from one task to another easily.”
If this were usually the case for everyone, stores and restaurants and waiting rooms would not always be playing music, or we would hear a lot more constant complaining about it. Your average person is not bothered by this and may even enjoy it. There may be times or contexts where they don’t like it, but as a general rule this is not a daily frustration.
“It's distressing to be unexpectedly pulled away from something I'm engaged in.”
Most workplaces, whether due to job responsibilities or the way people socialize, require this repeatedly. People may be frustrated or annoyed by it but they don’t experience it as significantly distressing. When I worked in an office with primarily non-autistic people they would interrupt each other to chat constantly. And while this was sometimes unwelcome, it usually was enjoyed and repeatedly engaged in by both parties. If they had a deadline or were REALLY FOCUSED, maybe they’d be upset by it, but simply having to step away from something they were engaged in did not rise above the level of “minor annoyance” on most occasions.
“Routines provide an important source of stability and safety.”
Many people appreciate routines and find them helpful. But they do not feel unsafe if their routine were disrupted. Your average individual is able to sleep in a hotel without feeling their sense of internal safety and security is compromised; it may be more stressful to have routines disrupted when you travel but it does not feel inherently destabilizing to the point that it significantly restricts your travel. My non-autistic friends generally travel cross country for a week at least once a year, with a handful of smaller trips in between. I can manage an in-state trip of a few nights about once a year, and a cross-country trip once every 5.
Of course, there are allistic people who would mark “strongly agree” on these questions. Everyone has their quirks and preferences and some of them will have these traits without being autistic, but if the majority of them are, yeah, that means something.
But regardless of whether it “is” or “isn’t” ASD, knowing that your brain processes information in this way is helpful for adapting your life to accommodate it, rather than beating your head against allistic standards of living that don’t work with your highl monotropic tendencies. You don’t need to answer any kind of diagnostic question to start making changes that align with this kind of thinking.
It would be interesting to see how this applies to ADHD.
A lot of overlap; the primary difference is ADHD brains often also have times where they crave that multiple cones of attention stimulation. Autistic people have this much more rarely. I don’t know if anyone has research whether this only applies to hyperactive ADHD or if it also does for inattentive though. But yeah, autism and ADHD overlap is significant and this is one of the primary areas in which they do. I need to poke at the paper to see if they talked about discriminative validity, but this is very early stages validation research so it makes sense if they haven’t yet.
Though for context, my partner and I are both autistic and ADHD, but have always said I’m more autistic and they’re more ADHD. They got more monotropic than 12% of autistic people and 83% of allistic people; I got more monotropic than 88% of autistic people and 100% of allistic people. So that tracked for us.
"I love routines! I cannot sustain a routine!" Should the name of my memoir.
This is absolutely not a cure-all but I really like Routinery and Brili for help with this. I still have to… start the routine… and not ignore all the notifications… but once I’m in there it’s pretty good, especially now that Routinery uses the “live events” feature on my phone to show me a ticking timer on my lock screen.
autism has a large executive (dis)function component, and ADHD is basically an executive function disorder that is existing on its own with no other cause.
Slight tweak to how I would describe this. Autism and ADHD are both developmental disorders; ADHD primarily (but not exclusively) affects the development of executive functioning skills, while autism can (but does not primarily) affect the development of executive functioning skills. This is somewhat semantics and somewhat important to remembering that neither autism nor ADHD are distinct “things” and are just the manifestation of the brain and body taking many different pathways across development.
That's not to say there aren't differences between people and matters of degree, but it feels pretty reductive to say some people are like this and other people are like that and these are two fundamentally different kinds of people. It feels like maybe the end of this train of thought is just dividing the world into neurodivergent people and sociopaths with nothing in between.
The entire point of the test is to say the only the differences in degree matter. The researcher’s proposal is that these are human traits that everyone experiences, and a certain cluster and degree of them is what we associate with autism. If you take the measure it shows you the distribution curve of their validation study (which I need to look into the details of more, but does exist on SOME sample of allistics vs autistics) allistic people can and do score all the way to 5 on the measure, but most of them score around 3. Which means they probably click “neither agree nor disagree” or “agree” to most questions.
It would be a terrible psychological test if your average human being would click “disagree” on everything because it would be way too specific. Most people are going to say “slightly agree” or “agree” to a large chunk of questions on the MMPI. It’s that plus the amount of questions you “strongly agree” to, and specific questions which are typically only agreed to by highly mentally ill individuals, that go into the score.
Have you ever been screened for depression by your PCP? I usually answer “several days in the past two weeks” for 3 out of 5 of the questions. Which is, as she described once, “exactly the normal amount” because human beings will experience transient symptoms of depression as part of being alive even outside of [gestures at global anything]. So yeah, a bunch of these questions are about simply being human, and the degree is what matters.
The test seems like it's designed to get people to identify as autistic, like, the majority of the questions will be answered in such a way as to land on the neurodiverse side of the scale by the majority of people. Where is the reliability and validity here? Doesn't it matter? I wish pseudoscience wouldn't get this kind of attention.
I assess autism professionally; I took the measure picturing my typical “so you’re a little introverted and eccentric but probably wouldn’t wouldn’t qualify for a diagnosis of autism (but autistic resources might help you)” individual. This involved saying “agree” to a LOT of the questions. The answer I got was “you are more monotropic than 1% of autistic people people and 12% of allistic people.” I actually thought I had leaned too hard into broader autism phenotype traits and was going to get a “yeah you’re as monotropic as your average autistic person” but I didn’t. So whatever it looks like on the front end, how it’s scored definitely does not do that.
See above on how the distribution actually fell as well; they tested it on allistics and got a bunch who scored along a range that is different from what autistic people score. So no, it doesn’t make most people score “as autistic” (which is also not how the test is interpreted).
posted by brook horse at 9:07 AM on June 1 [45 favorites]
The figure showing the distribution among autistic and non-autistic people is on page 18 of the preprint eirias references. On the subsequent page is displayed the different between ADHD and non-ADHD. Non-autistic with ADHD sits somewhat above non-autistic non-ADHD, unsurprisingly to me.
For interest's sake, the questionnaire is divided among nine factors/categories: special interests, rumination and anxiety, need for routines, environmental impact on the attention tunnel, losing track of other factors when focusing on special interests, struggle with decision-making, anxiety-reducing effect of special interests, managing social interactions, and no factor.
posted by lookoutbelow at 9:15 AM on June 1 [4 favorites]
For interest's sake, the questionnaire is divided among nine factors/categories: special interests, rumination and anxiety, need for routines, environmental impact on the attention tunnel, losing track of other factors when focusing on special interests, struggle with decision-making, anxiety-reducing effect of special interests, managing social interactions, and no factor.
posted by lookoutbelow at 9:15 AM on June 1 [4 favorites]
It also shows it at the end of the quiz. For reference for those who don’t want to complete it: here’s what that looks like, showing non-autistic vs autistic scores (screenshot is from my partner’s score). As you can see your average allistic scores a little above a 3, (though many score higher without being autistic) and your average autistic scores a little above a 4 .
So if you think most people would say “agree” to a lot of these questions, you’re probably right! If you think most people would say “strongly agree” to a lot of these questions, you may be experiencing the same thing as my friend who insisted “everyone can do that” when I mentioned that being able to bend your thumb to touch your wrist means you’re hypermobile in that joint.
posted by brook horse at 9:22 AM on June 1 [12 favorites]
So if you think most people would say “agree” to a lot of these questions, you’re probably right! If you think most people would say “strongly agree” to a lot of these questions, you may be experiencing the same thing as my friend who insisted “everyone can do that” when I mentioned that being able to bend your thumb to touch your wrist means you’re hypermobile in that joint.
posted by brook horse at 9:22 AM on June 1 [12 favorites]
Scored right around a 4, as one of those "so you’re a little introverted and eccentric but probably wouldn’t wouldn’t qualify for a diagnosis of autism (but autistic resources might help you)” people.
I am entirely uninterested in whether I would qualify for a diagnosis, but it has done wonders for my mental health to give myself permission to not be in rooms where there are too many people or too many conversations. (This is a privilege, I know; I've also had to work hard to figure out a job situation that doesn't force me into rooms with too many people and too many conversations.)
posted by Jeanne at 9:28 AM on June 1 [5 favorites]
I am entirely uninterested in whether I would qualify for a diagnosis, but it has done wonders for my mental health to give myself permission to not be in rooms where there are too many people or too many conversations. (This is a privilege, I know; I've also had to work hard to figure out a job situation that doesn't force me into rooms with too many people and too many conversations.)
posted by Jeanne at 9:28 AM on June 1 [5 favorites]
As an allistic person who tends to have deep focus, this was an interesting questionnaire and topic. I have a number of these traits: I usually have something I'm all in on at any point in time (right now it's graph-based vector search algorithm optimization) while dealing with some (also enjoyable!) maintenance on whatever the last thing was (painting miniatures). These areas of focus can last months or years. I definitely lose track of time, forget to eat, submerge in focused work to tune out the world. (A couple nights ago I spent four hours painting some miniature hoplites, because I have codenamed my current math project hoplite.)
But I also don't have many of the social and physical tics associated with the spectrum: I'm mostly fine in social situations (sometimes joke that I'm the most extroverted mathematician, which still means I'm pretty deeply introverted), have some repetitive thoughts that aren't toooo bad, and think I'm closer to fidgeting than stimming.
I'm the end, I scored about a 3 on the quiz, right in the middle of the allistic bell.
posted by kaibutsu at 9:30 AM on June 1 [2 favorites]
But I also don't have many of the social and physical tics associated with the spectrum: I'm mostly fine in social situations (sometimes joke that I'm the most extroverted mathematician, which still means I'm pretty deeply introverted), have some repetitive thoughts that aren't toooo bad, and think I'm closer to fidgeting than stimming.
I'm the end, I scored about a 3 on the quiz, right in the middle of the allistic bell.
posted by kaibutsu at 9:30 AM on June 1 [2 favorites]
4. But I've just been diagnosed with ADHD and it seems like a lot of this is similar. Difficulty regulating attention makes it difficult to change focus (or too easy to change focus).
posted by Laura_J at 9:33 AM on June 1 [1 favorite]
posted by Laura_J at 9:33 AM on June 1 [1 favorite]
Also, let's remember Bayes rule: the probability of being autistic given a high score on the quiz is proportional to the probability of a high score given autistic times the prevalence of autism:
P(A|+) = P(+|A) P(A) / P(+)
(Coding autism as A, and a high score as +.)
Looks like P(+|A) is quite high, but P(A) is still not all that high (even is it's under diagnosed), estimated at 1% globally. And there's still a significant chunk of allistic people who score high. So a high score on the test still isn't diagnostic. Setting P(A) at 0.01 and P(+) at (guessing, eyeballing the bell curve) 0.25, a high score would indicate a 1-in-25 chance of autism.
posted by kaibutsu at 9:38 AM on June 1 [6 favorites]
P(A|+) = P(+|A) P(A) / P(+)
(Coding autism as A, and a high score as +.)
Looks like P(+|A) is quite high, but P(A) is still not all that high (even is it's under diagnosed), estimated at 1% globally. And there's still a significant chunk of allistic people who score high. So a high score on the test still isn't diagnostic. Setting P(A) at 0.01 and P(+) at (guessing, eyeballing the bell curve) 0.25, a high score would indicate a 1-in-25 chance of autism.
posted by kaibutsu at 9:38 AM on June 1 [6 favorites]
> > “I need a quiet and predictable environment for me to switch from one task to another easily.”
> If this were usually the case for everyone, stores and restaurants and waiting rooms would not always be playing music,
I guess the problem might be a failure to properly communicate what's meant by "quiet and predictable", then. Especially because I'm a mom to kids who were quite recently young, loud, and chaotic, I would absolutely consider any waiting room and any non-crowded store to be a deliciously quiet and predictable environment - elevator music and all.
Like, I understand that it's not from some people's perspective, but this right here is exactly why this test is so bad. We are clearly interpreting these words "quiet and predictable" VERY differently, and the test does not control for our wildly variable interpretations. I marked that question as a "strongly agree", by the way, because literally any caregiver to small kids would. Unless you actually are autistic and thus you automatically have the same standards for interpreting words that this test does, you won't interpret this question in the way this test intends, and you'll get a higher score than merited.
> > “It's distressing to be unexpectedly pulled away from something I'm engaged in.”
Again, this is a good illustration of what's wrong with the test: no possibility of change and growth due to life circumstances is acknowledged here. There was a time in my life when I would be much worse than annoyed when interrupted but motherhood cured me of this issue completely. I just don't understand how anyone can base an evaluation of autism on this trait: by this measure, literally no parent can have autism?? Or else is this claiming that all autistic parents are abusive??? (Because it is absolutely abusive to a child if their parent is "distressed" by interruptions, no matter how much the parent may try to conceal their distress.) Considering most hands on parents and primary caregivers to small kids are women, here is a diagnostic criterion which makes women with autism invisible.
> > “Routines provide an important source of stability and safety.”
> Many people appreciate routines and find them helpful. But they do not feel unsafe if their routine were disrupted. Your average individual is able to sleep in a hotel without feeling their sense of internal safety and security is compromised;
People clearly have wildly different interpretations and understandings of what constitutes "routine" and what "safety" means in this context. A person might be very attached to their bedtime routine but not care where they perform it, and be perfectly capable of doing it in a new country every night, jet setting across the world. This test fails to adequately account for varying interpretations of common words.
Of course, there are allistic people who would mark “strongly agree” on these questions. .. yeah, that means something.
That's completely untrue. I think most neurotypical people - not just allistic but neurotypical people - would mark "strongly agree" and "agree" to most of these questions and *that really doesn't mean they are neurodiverse, or should be evaluated.* It just means this test is nonsense.
posted by MiraK at 9:48 AM on June 1
> If this were usually the case for everyone, stores and restaurants and waiting rooms would not always be playing music,
I guess the problem might be a failure to properly communicate what's meant by "quiet and predictable", then. Especially because I'm a mom to kids who were quite recently young, loud, and chaotic, I would absolutely consider any waiting room and any non-crowded store to be a deliciously quiet and predictable environment - elevator music and all.
Like, I understand that it's not from some people's perspective, but this right here is exactly why this test is so bad. We are clearly interpreting these words "quiet and predictable" VERY differently, and the test does not control for our wildly variable interpretations. I marked that question as a "strongly agree", by the way, because literally any caregiver to small kids would. Unless you actually are autistic and thus you automatically have the same standards for interpreting words that this test does, you won't interpret this question in the way this test intends, and you'll get a higher score than merited.
> > “It's distressing to be unexpectedly pulled away from something I'm engaged in.”
Again, this is a good illustration of what's wrong with the test: no possibility of change and growth due to life circumstances is acknowledged here. There was a time in my life when I would be much worse than annoyed when interrupted but motherhood cured me of this issue completely. I just don't understand how anyone can base an evaluation of autism on this trait: by this measure, literally no parent can have autism?? Or else is this claiming that all autistic parents are abusive??? (Because it is absolutely abusive to a child if their parent is "distressed" by interruptions, no matter how much the parent may try to conceal their distress.) Considering most hands on parents and primary caregivers to small kids are women, here is a diagnostic criterion which makes women with autism invisible.
> > “Routines provide an important source of stability and safety.”
> Many people appreciate routines and find them helpful. But they do not feel unsafe if their routine were disrupted. Your average individual is able to sleep in a hotel without feeling their sense of internal safety and security is compromised;
People clearly have wildly different interpretations and understandings of what constitutes "routine" and what "safety" means in this context. A person might be very attached to their bedtime routine but not care where they perform it, and be perfectly capable of doing it in a new country every night, jet setting across the world. This test fails to adequately account for varying interpretations of common words.
Of course, there are allistic people who would mark “strongly agree” on these questions. .. yeah, that means something.
That's completely untrue. I think most neurotypical people - not just allistic but neurotypical people - would mark "strongly agree" and "agree" to most of these questions and *that really doesn't mean they are neurodiverse, or should be evaluated.* It just means this test is nonsense.
posted by MiraK at 9:48 AM on June 1
3.70 here but I do a LOT of compensating. I noticed that a lot of these questions are based around only being able to do exactly one thing at a time, but I often find myself doing exactly 2 things at once but adding a 3rd is incredibly impossible. When I was younger I was never able to switch focus, but I learned it when I was around 7 or so and got pretty good at switching between two tasks that I enjoy. I also found excessive routines to be kind of distressing because they make me more aware of how repetitive and boring things are. But all of the questions about being "stuck" in certain memories or situations are definitely me, and I have all of the physical symptoms like not being aware of hunger/thirst.
My personal theory is that because my parents divorced and remarried when I was 4 and I was often switching houses, I had to learn how to handle dramatic switches in context early on. As long as the switch is predictable or under my control, I quite enjoy changing my focus because it keeps me interested. I also score in the marginal for various measures of ADHD.
Anyway, everyone is different and this is just a test for one trait. This definitely seems more valid than the self-diagnosis tests I have seen, which seem to be based on quite outdated research.
posted by JZig at 9:58 AM on June 1 [1 favorite]
My personal theory is that because my parents divorced and remarried when I was 4 and I was often switching houses, I had to learn how to handle dramatic switches in context early on. As long as the switch is predictable or under my control, I quite enjoy changing my focus because it keeps me interested. I also score in the marginal for various measures of ADHD.
Anyway, everyone is different and this is just a test for one trait. This definitely seems more valid than the self-diagnosis tests I have seen, which seem to be based on quite outdated research.
posted by JZig at 9:58 AM on June 1 [1 favorite]
antinomia, I was commenting on the tendency in these kinds of discussions to define autistic traits in such a way that they apply to most people, at times, with the exception of people who feel no anxiety at all. To my mind, there's clearly a broad spectrum of the degree to which people have these kinds of traits in such a way that saying these people are definitely autistic and are completely different from those other people who are definitely allistic feels a bit reductive.
posted by ssg at 10:00 AM on June 1 [1 favorite]
posted by ssg at 10:00 AM on June 1 [1 favorite]
Like, I understand that it's not from some people's perspective, but this right here is exactly why this test is so bad. We are clearly interpreting these words "quiet and predictable" VERY differently, and the test does not control for our wildly variable interpretations.
The test is not meant to diagnose autism. It's just a screener. It's to help you decide if you might want to get an assessment. An actual assessment consists of a very long conversation (usually over many visits) with a therapist, where the therapist is expecting to get plenty of these sorts of questions and they have clarifying examples ready for you. Assessments are very time consuming and expensive (depending on your insurance situation) so screeners are useful for helping people decide if they should commit to a full assessment.
And this particular test only covers a few diagnostic criteria for autism, not the full suite necessary for a diagnosis.
posted by antinomia at 10:00 AM on June 1 [5 favorites]
The test is not meant to diagnose autism. It's just a screener. It's to help you decide if you might want to get an assessment. An actual assessment consists of a very long conversation (usually over many visits) with a therapist, where the therapist is expecting to get plenty of these sorts of questions and they have clarifying examples ready for you. Assessments are very time consuming and expensive (depending on your insurance situation) so screeners are useful for helping people decide if they should commit to a full assessment.
And this particular test only covers a few diagnostic criteria for autism, not the full suite necessary for a diagnosis.
posted by antinomia at 10:00 AM on June 1 [5 favorites]
I have a gut feeling the proposed mechanism is over simplified. There are multiple things at play in managing my attention, anxiety and dissociation levels. I also feel there may not be a straightforward biological link between "attention," neurotransmitter levels, and the pleasure/reward centres of the brain. I am pretty sure all of those factor in. So it's an interesting angle but not convincing to me. I think the author has hyperfixated on a single idea and is going rather too far with it. Which is perhaps unsurprising.
I also didn't like the quiz. I had a number of behaviours beaten out of me as a child and other behaviours have been so powerfully masked with socially acceptable alternatives that I have no idea what to answer any more.
posted by seanmpuckett at 10:04 AM on June 1 [4 favorites]
I also didn't like the quiz. I had a number of behaviours beaten out of me as a child and other behaviours have been so powerfully masked with socially acceptable alternatives that I have no idea what to answer any more.
posted by seanmpuckett at 10:04 AM on June 1 [4 favorites]
The test seems like it's designed to get people to identify as autistic, like, the majority of the questions will be answered in such a way as to land on the neurodiverse side of the scale by the majority of people.
Have you not seen the comments from multiple allistic/neurotypical people in this very post who have taken it and scored in the allistic/neurotypical zone? Clearly it's not scoring the "majority of people" as possibly autistic.
posted by fight or flight at 10:06 AM on June 1 [9 favorites]
Have you not seen the comments from multiple allistic/neurotypical people in this very post who have taken it and scored in the allistic/neurotypical zone? Clearly it's not scoring the "majority of people" as possibly autistic.
posted by fight or flight at 10:06 AM on June 1 [9 favorites]
Like, I understand that it's not from some people's perspective, but this right here is exactly why this test is so bad. We are clearly interpreting these words "quiet and predictable" VERY differently, and the test does not control for our wildly variable interpretations.
These are fundamental problems with all self-report questionnaires because they can’t account for the infinite variety of human experience and we never know how people are interpreting them. Your questions are valid but apply to every form of testing we have; there will be infinite variables and exceptions.
That’s why we give it to a sample of people and see how those people, on average, respond. Then we compare scores to that. The value is in comparing scores to how the average person in your sample responded while taking into account personal details and knowing you will be interpreting and responding to some things very differently. That’s why we do NOT diagnose based on test scores alone; a psychometricist can give and score tests but they cannot interpret—a psychologist has to do that, in combination with a clinical interview to elucidate some of those unique individual situations.
Also, no one is basing an evaluation of autism on this measure. It’s not an ASD diagnostic test and it’s not supposed to be, but it can be a flag for autism. Some autistic people score low on this, but if you score high you are more likely to have autism, hence a reason to get it checked out. But this isn’t even a screening test either, it’s just measuring the distribution of this trait in different groups.
Or else is this claiming that all autistic parents are abusive??? (Because it is absolutely abusive to a child if their parent is "distressed" by interruptions, no matter how much the parent may try to conceal their distress.)
This is a completely wild reach, but I’m going to try to engage in good faith and remind you that this is a single question that goes into a larger score. No single thing on here is “all autistic people experience this.” If you’re an autistic person who doesn’t, great! Some do. Some autistic people can never safely parent children because of their autism and that doesn’t invalidate the autistic people who can.
Also, many autistic people have flat affect. I do not have to conceal my distress because I do not express distress involuntarily except in extreme circumstances. So, I can be distressed by interruptions and not be “abusive”; asserting that everyone involuntarily expresses their emotions is ignorant of the experiences of many autistic individuals. Also, being distressed by interruptions is an extremely common autistic trait and saying that any parent experiencing this is abusive is… certainly a take.
That's completely untrue. I think most neurotypical people - not just allistic but neurotypical people - would mark "strongly agree" and "agree" to most of these questions and *that really doesn't mean they are neurodiverse, or should be evaluated.* It just means this test is nonsense.
I mean, you’re just fundamentally wrong because they did administer this test to a bunch of allistic people and most people in that group did not select “agree/strongly agree” to most questions. That’s how studying the validity of a test works.
I think the questions are not worded well at all, but the fact remains is DESPITE that they still found a difference between how allistic and autistic people respond. That is straight fact. It doesn’t mean if you respond x on this test you’re definitely autistic or definitely not, but it does mean “if you respond like x you’re responding more like Group A than Group B in their sample and that’s something to investigate.”
posted by brook horse at 10:07 AM on June 1 [31 favorites]
These are fundamental problems with all self-report questionnaires because they can’t account for the infinite variety of human experience and we never know how people are interpreting them. Your questions are valid but apply to every form of testing we have; there will be infinite variables and exceptions.
That’s why we give it to a sample of people and see how those people, on average, respond. Then we compare scores to that. The value is in comparing scores to how the average person in your sample responded while taking into account personal details and knowing you will be interpreting and responding to some things very differently. That’s why we do NOT diagnose based on test scores alone; a psychometricist can give and score tests but they cannot interpret—a psychologist has to do that, in combination with a clinical interview to elucidate some of those unique individual situations.
Also, no one is basing an evaluation of autism on this measure. It’s not an ASD diagnostic test and it’s not supposed to be, but it can be a flag for autism. Some autistic people score low on this, but if you score high you are more likely to have autism, hence a reason to get it checked out. But this isn’t even a screening test either, it’s just measuring the distribution of this trait in different groups.
Or else is this claiming that all autistic parents are abusive??? (Because it is absolutely abusive to a child if their parent is "distressed" by interruptions, no matter how much the parent may try to conceal their distress.)
This is a completely wild reach, but I’m going to try to engage in good faith and remind you that this is a single question that goes into a larger score. No single thing on here is “all autistic people experience this.” If you’re an autistic person who doesn’t, great! Some do. Some autistic people can never safely parent children because of their autism and that doesn’t invalidate the autistic people who can.
Also, many autistic people have flat affect. I do not have to conceal my distress because I do not express distress involuntarily except in extreme circumstances. So, I can be distressed by interruptions and not be “abusive”; asserting that everyone involuntarily expresses their emotions is ignorant of the experiences of many autistic individuals. Also, being distressed by interruptions is an extremely common autistic trait and saying that any parent experiencing this is abusive is… certainly a take.
That's completely untrue. I think most neurotypical people - not just allistic but neurotypical people - would mark "strongly agree" and "agree" to most of these questions and *that really doesn't mean they are neurodiverse, or should be evaluated.* It just means this test is nonsense.
I mean, you’re just fundamentally wrong because they did administer this test to a bunch of allistic people and most people in that group did not select “agree/strongly agree” to most questions. That’s how studying the validity of a test works.
I think the questions are not worded well at all, but the fact remains is DESPITE that they still found a difference between how allistic and autistic people respond. That is straight fact. It doesn’t mean if you respond x on this test you’re definitely autistic or definitely not, but it does mean “if you respond like x you’re responding more like Group A than Group B in their sample and that’s something to investigate.”
posted by brook horse at 10:07 AM on June 1 [31 favorites]
I actually took the point of this questionnaire to be something very different from a diagnosis — I took the authors to be making a claim about the etiology of autism, one I think is interesting.
I’m confused by your strong reaction to this, MiraK.
posted by eirias at 10:30 AM on June 1 [7 favorites]
I’m confused by your strong reaction to this, MiraK.
posted by eirias at 10:30 AM on June 1 [7 favorites]
Hang on, I think there’s some misreading happening here as well.
MiraK, are you saying that because of being a parent, you CAN switch tasks easily in a loud and unpredictable environment? Because if that’s the case, then your answer to the “I need a quiet and predictable environment in order to switch tasks easily” should be STRONGLY DISAGREE. It’s not saying “I prefer peace and quiet” it’s saying “I CANNOT do this easily UNLESS I have peace and quiet.” Almost any parent would say NO to that question, because they function in loud chaotic environments all the time.
Which isn’t a matter of the phrasing missing your life experience, that’s just reading the actual words of the question wrong. Which can happen to anyone and is another flaw of self-report questionnaires, but isn’t a problem with how it’s written (even if it could be written better, “I need x in order to do y” is pretty straightforward).
posted by brook horse at 10:31 AM on June 1 [8 favorites]
MiraK, are you saying that because of being a parent, you CAN switch tasks easily in a loud and unpredictable environment? Because if that’s the case, then your answer to the “I need a quiet and predictable environment in order to switch tasks easily” should be STRONGLY DISAGREE. It’s not saying “I prefer peace and quiet” it’s saying “I CANNOT do this easily UNLESS I have peace and quiet.” Almost any parent would say NO to that question, because they function in loud chaotic environments all the time.
Which isn’t a matter of the phrasing missing your life experience, that’s just reading the actual words of the question wrong. Which can happen to anyone and is another flaw of self-report questionnaires, but isn’t a problem with how it’s written (even if it could be written better, “I need x in order to do y” is pretty straightforward).
posted by brook horse at 10:31 AM on June 1 [8 favorites]
Monotropism Score: 203 / 235
Your Average: 4.32
This score suggests that you are more Monotropic than about 69% of autistic people and about 98% of allistic people based on data from the initial validation study.
For the record I’ve always thought of myself as “very mildly on the spectrum,” or “a light case of Asperger’s, back when we used that to mean high-functioning Diet Autism.” This matches the clinical evaluations of about two dozen mental health professionals over the last 25 years.
I get about two hours of genuine social interaction and empathy a day. After that, according to my most recent ex, “I swear to god it’s like I can hear a timer bell go ‘ding!’” and if I’m in an extended social situation I'll attempt to just power through with masking, otherwise I just collapse into my default Irritable Vulcan.
The consensus of my therapists about what’s the deal with Ryvar? hasn’t changed in over a decade, though: profound type 1 bipolar, moderate adhd, mild autism… and conventionally arrogant but not narcissistic (I asked about this, apparently readily admitting mistakes and going so far out of your way to avoid manipulating others or being manipulated by them that it “verges on a bidirectional paranoia” is disqualifying).
posted by Ryvar at 10:34 AM on June 1 [9 favorites]
Your Average: 4.32
This score suggests that you are more Monotropic than about 69% of autistic people and about 98% of allistic people based on data from the initial validation study.
For the record I’ve always thought of myself as “very mildly on the spectrum,” or “a light case of Asperger’s, back when we used that to mean high-functioning Diet Autism.” This matches the clinical evaluations of about two dozen mental health professionals over the last 25 years.
I get about two hours of genuine social interaction and empathy a day. After that, according to my most recent ex, “I swear to god it’s like I can hear a timer bell go ‘ding!’” and if I’m in an extended social situation I'll attempt to just power through with masking, otherwise I just collapse into my default Irritable Vulcan.
The consensus of my therapists about what’s the deal with Ryvar? hasn’t changed in over a decade, though: profound type 1 bipolar, moderate adhd, mild autism… and conventionally arrogant but not narcissistic (I asked about this, apparently readily admitting mistakes and going so far out of your way to avoid manipulating others or being manipulated by them that it “verges on a bidirectional paranoia” is disqualifying).
posted by Ryvar at 10:34 AM on June 1 [9 favorites]
A lot of these questions do seem pretty ... just human
strongly agree with this even as I don't think I strongly agreed (or disagreed) with a single item on the questionnaire. In fact "Neither Agree or Disagree" was by far my most common answer, with my overall score being on the slightly lower side of the middle.
So what's that make me? Normal?
except ummm, for the record, I am, for lack of a better word, an artist. Which rather by definition means that focus-concentration-passion are aspects of my consciousness that I've been fine-tuning for the entirety of my life (ie: certain "autistic" traits I have may be more nurture than nature). But counter to this is a recent talk I had with my brother. We moved a fair bit as kids (six times before I was twelve, he fourteen), so we both in our way had to consciously develop social skills just to survive that most kids probably wouldn't ever be conscious of.
So in conclusion, I guess I neither agree or disagree.
posted by philip-random at 10:46 AM on June 1 [6 favorites]
strongly agree with this even as I don't think I strongly agreed (or disagreed) with a single item on the questionnaire. In fact "Neither Agree or Disagree" was by far my most common answer, with my overall score being on the slightly lower side of the middle.
So what's that make me? Normal?
except ummm, for the record, I am, for lack of a better word, an artist. Which rather by definition means that focus-concentration-passion are aspects of my consciousness that I've been fine-tuning for the entirety of my life (ie: certain "autistic" traits I have may be more nurture than nature). But counter to this is a recent talk I had with my brother. We moved a fair bit as kids (six times before I was twelve, he fourteen), so we both in our way had to consciously develop social skills just to survive that most kids probably wouldn't ever be conscious of.
So in conclusion, I guess I neither agree or disagree.
posted by philip-random at 10:46 AM on June 1 [6 favorites]
Thank you for your eponysterical adding data to our MeFi sample, philip-random.
posted by brook horse at 10:47 AM on June 1 [7 favorites]
posted by brook horse at 10:47 AM on June 1 [7 favorites]
See above on how the distribution actually fell as well; they tested it on allistics and got a bunch who scored along a range that is different from what autistic people score
Yeah I am a little sensitive to diagnostic encroachment, because, look, people online like to talk about autism a lot, and I certainly have a few traits from that cluster, but not to the extent that I feel like the label actually adds much over the labels I already have. But in fact I came out precisely in the “pretty high for NT but still low for autistic” range here.
posted by atoxyl at 10:49 AM on June 1 [1 favorite]
Yeah I am a little sensitive to diagnostic encroachment, because, look, people online like to talk about autism a lot, and I certainly have a few traits from that cluster, but not to the extent that I feel like the label actually adds much over the labels I already have. But in fact I came out precisely in the “pretty high for NT but still low for autistic” range here.
posted by atoxyl at 10:49 AM on June 1 [1 favorite]
Hey, fellow allistic folks, maybe take a moment to consider letting the folks this is explicitly about give their reaction and following their cues as to if this test speaks to their experience or not.
Because like, having sat through several weird Long COVID threads as a person with Long COVID, I can tell you how shitty it feels not to be given space to tell your story.
posted by Gygesringtone at 10:53 AM on June 1 [27 favorites]
Because like, having sat through several weird Long COVID threads as a person with Long COVID, I can tell you how shitty it feels not to be given space to tell your story.
posted by Gygesringtone at 10:53 AM on June 1 [27 favorites]
I am, for lack of a better word, an artist.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in 27 years of game development it’s that programmers lean autistic and artists lean mood disorder (bipolar or depressive).
consider letting the folks this is explicitly about give their reaction
*raises hand* Actually I would like to continue hearing their experiences with the same or greater frequency, because I also frequently suspect mental health diagnostics are leading, and more data for or against is helpful. I am not saying you are wrong or bad to ask that, but I am saying that you are not speaking for all autistic people present: we are not a monolith.
posted by Ryvar at 11:00 AM on June 1 [7 favorites]
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in 27 years of game development it’s that programmers lean autistic and artists lean mood disorder (bipolar or depressive).
consider letting the folks this is explicitly about give their reaction
*raises hand* Actually I would like to continue hearing their experiences with the same or greater frequency, because I also frequently suspect mental health diagnostics are leading, and more data for or against is helpful. I am not saying you are wrong or bad to ask that, but I am saying that you are not speaking for all autistic people present: we are not a monolith.
posted by Ryvar at 11:00 AM on June 1 [7 favorites]
I think Gygesringtone is maybe speaking more to the people going “this is NOT reflective of autism, EVERYONE experiences this” despite the data showing that to be demonstrably untrue, than to the allistic people sharing how this test shows how their experience differs from autistic people’s.
I too would like allistic people to share their experiences while also not insisting that this test is garbage because they think they understand trait distributions better than the researchers who actually sampled data on that. So thanks to those who have.
posted by brook horse at 11:09 AM on June 1 [20 favorites]
I too would like allistic people to share their experiences while also not insisting that this test is garbage because they think they understand trait distributions better than the researchers who actually sampled data on that. So thanks to those who have.
posted by brook horse at 11:09 AM on June 1 [20 favorites]
I think it's an interesting finding that one group of the people tested tend to be more like this and another group more like that. It's a proposed questionnaire for this trait of "monotropism", which there is good reason to think may be associated with autism. It's not supposed to reveal a truth about an individual person beyond attempting to measure this proposed description of a trait.
As for the article, it also must be taken in context. It's responding to the pervasive theories of autism in academia making little sense to many/most autistic people and feeling totally misaligned with internal experiences, and this particular one making a lot of sense to this particular person. This claim: "[m]onotropism provides a far more comprehensive explanation for autistic cognition than any of its competitors, so it has been good to see it finally starting to get more recognition among psychologists" does not mean that it provides a fully comprehensive explanation, simply a better one than others. I happen to agree.
I don't really get why people feel so strongly that 'this is a bad test' given its limited scope and being situated within an academic discourse which most of us are not expert in.
I also don't really get why non-autistic people would feel put off by agreeing with these questions.
Personally I strongly identified with the questions, received a very high score and have diagnosed ADHD, as well as being self-identified/diagnosed as autistic.
I appreciated that the framing of this questionnaire was not deficit-oriented as so many are, where questions feel like "do other people say you're not normal" or "are you like this [obviously coded as negative, unrelatable and undesirable trait]" or "are you obsessed with train schedules and sports statistics [which would be obviously weird]" or whatever.
I also like hearing neurotypical experiences in response to the questions, so long as they are not invalidating, i.e. they recognize that people interpret the questions differently and have different experiences.
posted by lookoutbelow at 11:11 AM on June 1 [11 favorites]
As for the article, it also must be taken in context. It's responding to the pervasive theories of autism in academia making little sense to many/most autistic people and feeling totally misaligned with internal experiences, and this particular one making a lot of sense to this particular person. This claim: "[m]onotropism provides a far more comprehensive explanation for autistic cognition than any of its competitors, so it has been good to see it finally starting to get more recognition among psychologists" does not mean that it provides a fully comprehensive explanation, simply a better one than others. I happen to agree.
I don't really get why people feel so strongly that 'this is a bad test' given its limited scope and being situated within an academic discourse which most of us are not expert in.
I also don't really get why non-autistic people would feel put off by agreeing with these questions.
Personally I strongly identified with the questions, received a very high score and have diagnosed ADHD, as well as being self-identified/diagnosed as autistic.
I appreciated that the framing of this questionnaire was not deficit-oriented as so many are, where questions feel like "do other people say you're not normal" or "are you like this [obviously coded as negative, unrelatable and undesirable trait]" or "are you obsessed with train schedules and sports statistics [which would be obviously weird]" or whatever.
I also like hearing neurotypical experiences in response to the questions, so long as they are not invalidating, i.e. they recognize that people interpret the questions differently and have different experiences.
posted by lookoutbelow at 11:11 AM on June 1 [11 favorites]
For what it's worth, I actually meant exactly what I said, that folks should consider that they have an option not to comment in order to leave space for others.
I'm not saying all autistic people feel a specific way about these conversations. I'm sure they don't (which is why, I would like to hear more of how they feel, because I do want to get a better understanding of where those differences are). I am saying that I've seen a similar dynamic where folks who don't have a lived experience are too busy giving their own reactions to listen to those that do have that experience. And that my turn on one end of that felt shitty.
And, like, even then there were those without the experience who were engaged in a dialogue, and those who weren't. I think there's a burden in these discussions that those of us without that experience to consider if what which of those we're doing, and in my opinion one of the best methods to get a feel for which is which is to let the folks who've lived the type of life being discussed to go first conversationally.
posted by Gygesringtone at 11:15 AM on June 1 [5 favorites]
I'm not saying all autistic people feel a specific way about these conversations. I'm sure they don't (which is why, I would like to hear more of how they feel, because I do want to get a better understanding of where those differences are). I am saying that I've seen a similar dynamic where folks who don't have a lived experience are too busy giving their own reactions to listen to those that do have that experience. And that my turn on one end of that felt shitty.
And, like, even then there were those without the experience who were engaged in a dialogue, and those who weren't. I think there's a burden in these discussions that those of us without that experience to consider if what which of those we're doing, and in my opinion one of the best methods to get a feel for which is which is to let the folks who've lived the type of life being discussed to go first conversationally.
posted by Gygesringtone at 11:15 AM on June 1 [5 favorites]
I think there's a burden in these discussions that those of us without that experience to consider if what which of those we're doing
Well that's a hot mess, that last sentence should read:
I think there's a burden in these discussions that those of us without that experience to consider which of those we're doing, and in my opinion one of the best methods to get a feel for which is which is to let the folks who've lived the type of life being discussed to go first conversationally.
posted by Gygesringtone at 11:21 AM on June 1 [3 favorites]
Well that's a hot mess, that last sentence should read:
I think there's a burden in these discussions that those of us without that experience to consider which of those we're doing, and in my opinion one of the best methods to get a feel for which is which is to let the folks who've lived the type of life being discussed to go first conversationally.
posted by Gygesringtone at 11:21 AM on June 1 [3 favorites]
I completed this questionnaire just now. Score: 4.09, a mild outlier for an allistic person and a fairly typical score for an autistic person. I appreciate kaibutsu’s point about base rates but P(A) is higher than the population base rate in my case because of my family history. I’m comfortable with these results and how they fit into the authors’ theory.
I found taking this questionnaire so relaxing! I absolutely feel a lot of discomfort when I’m interrupted and it tends to show on my face, which other people tend to read as “eirias is a jerk / shirker / malcontent” instead of “eirias has been hard booted and is going to take a couple minutes to come back online.”
posted by eirias at 11:26 AM on June 1 [11 favorites]
I found taking this questionnaire so relaxing! I absolutely feel a lot of discomfort when I’m interrupted and it tends to show on my face, which other people tend to read as “eirias is a jerk / shirker / malcontent” instead of “eirias has been hard booted and is going to take a couple minutes to come back online.”
posted by eirias at 11:26 AM on June 1 [11 favorites]
In the spirit of sharing experiences, here's statements that resonate as to why I find grocery shopping unreasonably difficult:
- When there is a lot of information to consider, I often struggle to make a decision.
- Sometimes making a decision is so hard I get physically stuck.
(e.g. staring at all the tuna cans)
- I find it difficult to engage in a task of no interest to me even if it is important.
- I can get quite good at something even if I'm not especially interested in it. (not cooking or grocery shopping)
- I need a quiet and predictable environment for me to switch from one task to another easily.
- I find sudden unexpected disruptions to my attention startling.
- I have trouble filtering out sounds when I am not doing something I'm focused on.
- I often struggle to concentrate in busy and/or unpredictable environments.
Not to mention the bonus round for reasons it's hard to go in the first place, like "I often find it difficult to switch topics after engaging in an activity for a long time."
In the past, I didn't realize that when some people said "I don't want to" or "don't like" doing things like chores, errands, shopping, staying for a long time in loud places, etc that they weren't talking about persistent life-affecting energy-draining struggles with those things. Or that "I have too many things to do today, I am too tired" was like "five things" instead of "more than one or two".
posted by lookoutbelow at 11:29 AM on June 1 [15 favorites]
- When there is a lot of information to consider, I often struggle to make a decision.
- Sometimes making a decision is so hard I get physically stuck.
(e.g. staring at all the tuna cans)
- I find it difficult to engage in a task of no interest to me even if it is important.
- I can get quite good at something even if I'm not especially interested in it. (not cooking or grocery shopping)
- I need a quiet and predictable environment for me to switch from one task to another easily.
- I find sudden unexpected disruptions to my attention startling.
- I have trouble filtering out sounds when I am not doing something I'm focused on.
- I often struggle to concentrate in busy and/or unpredictable environments.
Not to mention the bonus round for reasons it's hard to go in the first place, like "I often find it difficult to switch topics after engaging in an activity for a long time."
In the past, I didn't realize that when some people said "I don't want to" or "don't like" doing things like chores, errands, shopping, staying for a long time in loud places, etc that they weren't talking about persistent life-affecting energy-draining struggles with those things. Or that "I have too many things to do today, I am too tired" was like "five things" instead of "more than one or two".
posted by lookoutbelow at 11:29 AM on June 1 [15 favorites]
I score very high on this test and it’s hard for me to understand/believe that others don’t so i am very interested in hearing from people who don’t score high in monotropism!
posted by congen at 11:31 AM on June 1 [8 favorites]
posted by congen at 11:31 AM on June 1 [8 favorites]
I agree with MiraK, this is Buzzfeed-esque, but at the same time, I remember when MetaFilter was super into MBTI and that was fairly harmless in the end.
posted by betweenthebars at 11:45 AM on June 1 [1 favorite]
posted by betweenthebars at 11:45 AM on June 1 [1 favorite]
I wonder how strong the effect of people answering the questions in line with how they see themselves (as either autistic or non-autistic) is. It's pretty obvious which questions are scored which way (and they are pretty similar to other sets of questions on autism) and it seems that the people who took the test already considered themselves autistic or not, so I'm sure there is some degree of people answering the questions in line with what they believe about themselves, which might be different from what they would answer if they were completely naive.
posted by ssg at 12:03 PM on June 1 [1 favorite]
posted by ssg at 12:03 PM on June 1 [1 favorite]
I actually sent the quiz to a friend who is diagnosed with ADHD and who is also pretty certain she has no co-morbid autism and I accidentally didn’t include any context (I didn’t realize the description doesn’t mention autism at all so if you don’t know what monotropism is there’s no clue) and she got a 2.6. She said she thought it might be screening for OCD or autism but couldn’t really tell. Do with that datapoint what you will!
posted by brook horse at 12:09 PM on June 1 [6 favorites]
posted by brook horse at 12:09 PM on June 1 [6 favorites]
Well shucks, normally I don't think of Metafilter as a stigmatizing place as an autistic person (for being fat, yes, but as an autistic person, no), but some of you are causing my heart rate to sky rocket right now. Some of you are missing the point so hard that your ignorance is showing and you need to possibly reassess.
posted by wellifyouinsist at 12:20 PM on June 1 [13 favorites]
posted by wellifyouinsist at 12:20 PM on June 1 [13 favorites]
4.47 do I win a prize?
posted by Faintdreams at 12:21 PM on June 1 [3 favorites]
posted by Faintdreams at 12:21 PM on June 1 [3 favorites]
I think that rather than writing a long comment, I'm going to use those questions as journaling prompts. Thanks, anotherpanacea. (3.89)
posted by MonkeyToes at 12:52 PM on June 1 [3 favorites]
posted by MonkeyToes at 12:52 PM on June 1 [3 favorites]
So, full disclosure: I was diagnosed with ADHD in my mid-30s, which is several years ago now. Slightly neurospicy here. And I'm perfectly open to the idea that I might be allistic or autistic. After answering questions very begrudgingly (because there was no acceptable answer for me in most cases) I scored a 3.8 on the test, which may be perfectly reflective of my level of neurospice - or it may not be.
I just don't think this test is any indicator either way, because of how vague and badly worded it is, and because of how its creator - who has no expertise in diagnosis or in autism - is explicitly and deliberately boiling down autism to just a single dimension based on their opinion + reading one paper that suggests a correlation.
> MiraK, are you saying that because of being a parent, you CAN switch tasks easily in a loud and unpredictable environment?
Nope, I do it with difficulty. All parents will tell you it's not "easy". It's not "easy" for most people, I don't think, neurotypical or allistic or autistic.
Your interpretation of the questions seems to be almost the opposite of what I understood from the test. 🤷🏾 It seems to me that you're starting from a position of knowing what the test wants and what it's trying to measure, and tailoring your understanding to make sure that the test works properly on you. Commenters here who liken this to MBTI are on to something, that test also relies on the test taker deliberately working towards a pre-known or pre-preferred approximate result.
> “I CANNOT do this easily UNLESS I have peace and quiet.”
In my case I don't switch tasks easily even when there is peace and quiet but that's a whole other rant lol.
posted by MiraK at 1:11 PM on June 1 [2 favorites]
I just don't think this test is any indicator either way, because of how vague and badly worded it is, and because of how its creator - who has no expertise in diagnosis or in autism - is explicitly and deliberately boiling down autism to just a single dimension based on their opinion + reading one paper that suggests a correlation.
> MiraK, are you saying that because of being a parent, you CAN switch tasks easily in a loud and unpredictable environment?
Nope, I do it with difficulty. All parents will tell you it's not "easy". It's not "easy" for most people, I don't think, neurotypical or allistic or autistic.
Your interpretation of the questions seems to be almost the opposite of what I understood from the test. 🤷🏾 It seems to me that you're starting from a position of knowing what the test wants and what it's trying to measure, and tailoring your understanding to make sure that the test works properly on you. Commenters here who liken this to MBTI are on to something, that test also relies on the test taker deliberately working towards a pre-known or pre-preferred approximate result.
> “I CANNOT do this easily UNLESS I have peace and quiet.”
In my case I don't switch tasks easily even when there is peace and quiet but that's a whole other rant lol.
posted by MiraK at 1:11 PM on June 1 [2 favorites]
A lot of these questions do seem pretty ... just human
Was there an expectation that this test would identify non-humans?
3.84
posted by Revvy at 1:14 PM on June 1 [8 favorites]
Was there an expectation that this test would identify non-humans?
3.84
posted by Revvy at 1:14 PM on June 1 [8 favorites]
I got 3.83. Is arguing with the test a sign of possibly being on the spectrum? Heh. (I say that unrelated to the last couple comments, which were posted as I was writing this.)
The wording of some of the questions isn't great yet, it's true. Like the one about whether you can follow in groups where everyone is talking—if we're talking about trying to understand people in conversation in a crowded bar where everyone is yelling, yeah, absolutely can't follow that and don't like being there. If we're talking about following along in a group discussion in a work environment, even if people are talking over each other a bit, I usually do all right.
But it's likely I'm also probably somewhere in AuDHD territory. So that's me.
posted by limeonaire at 1:14 PM on June 1 [1 favorite]
The wording of some of the questions isn't great yet, it's true. Like the one about whether you can follow in groups where everyone is talking—if we're talking about trying to understand people in conversation in a crowded bar where everyone is yelling, yeah, absolutely can't follow that and don't like being there. If we're talking about following along in a group discussion in a work environment, even if people are talking over each other a bit, I usually do all right.
But it's likely I'm also probably somewhere in AuDHD territory. So that's me.
posted by limeonaire at 1:14 PM on June 1 [1 favorite]
MiraK, the authors never claimed it was a test for ASD! Just saying that they gave the test to a bunch of autistics and allistics and got different patterns of response.
It’s not a diagnostic test and never was. The phrasing can be interpreted different ways but that does not change the fact that they got different results giving it to autistics vs allistics, so if you got results more like autistics you are more like autistics on monotropism. That doesn’t guarantee you’re autistic, anymore than getting results more like allistics guarantees you’re not, but it’s useful information about yourself.
I think you’re misunderstanding the website, which admittedly the intro text is unclear. The person who put it on the web for people to take has no experience in autism or diagnosis—they just coded the web page. But the questions and scoring are directly from a study by a team of researchers who DO have this background. The disclaimer is simply “I did the IT to put this up here, don’t yell at me about the content” but the questions themselves were formed by people who do have expertise.
posted by brook horse at 1:21 PM on June 1 [15 favorites]
It’s not a diagnostic test and never was. The phrasing can be interpreted different ways but that does not change the fact that they got different results giving it to autistics vs allistics, so if you got results more like autistics you are more like autistics on monotropism. That doesn’t guarantee you’re autistic, anymore than getting results more like allistics guarantees you’re not, but it’s useful information about yourself.
I think you’re misunderstanding the website, which admittedly the intro text is unclear. The person who put it on the web for people to take has no experience in autism or diagnosis—they just coded the web page. But the questions and scoring are directly from a study by a team of researchers who DO have this background. The disclaimer is simply “I did the IT to put this up here, don’t yell at me about the content” but the questions themselves were formed by people who do have expertise.
posted by brook horse at 1:21 PM on June 1 [15 favorites]
is explicitly and deliberately boiling down autism to just a single dimension based on their opinion + reading one paper that suggests a correlation.
Like this is just straight up not what is happening. Look. The first article in the FPP is the person who originally came up with the concept of high monotropism as an underlying explanation of autism. Monotropism has been studied since then by many researchers. It’s not been definitively linked to autism, so a research team created a monotropism questionnaire to measure it, and validated it on a sample of autistic and allistic adults. They found that autistic adults score higher in monotropism ON AVERAGE but have a range of scores. Then a web dev took the questionnaire and put it on the web for anyone to take. That’s the second link.
At no point has anyone said this test means you are or aren’t autistic, that this is the only thing relevant in autism, or that people who aren’t autistic can’t score high on this (they very explicitly can! look at the charts!). The only thing it gives you is “I score higher/lower on this thing that tends to be higher in autistic people and lower in allistic people/the average population.” Zero claims are being made beyond that.
The VERY FIRST mention of autism on the page is not until you finish the questionnaire, and it explicitly says:
“As a reminder this is an assessment for Monotropism, a trait sometimes associated with Autism, not Autism directly. If you score high, please be sure to do further research into Monotropism, more information can be found: https://monotropism.org/“
posted by brook horse at 1:35 PM on June 1 [9 favorites]
Like this is just straight up not what is happening. Look. The first article in the FPP is the person who originally came up with the concept of high monotropism as an underlying explanation of autism. Monotropism has been studied since then by many researchers. It’s not been definitively linked to autism, so a research team created a monotropism questionnaire to measure it, and validated it on a sample of autistic and allistic adults. They found that autistic adults score higher in monotropism ON AVERAGE but have a range of scores. Then a web dev took the questionnaire and put it on the web for anyone to take. That’s the second link.
At no point has anyone said this test means you are or aren’t autistic, that this is the only thing relevant in autism, or that people who aren’t autistic can’t score high on this (they very explicitly can! look at the charts!). The only thing it gives you is “I score higher/lower on this thing that tends to be higher in autistic people and lower in allistic people/the average population.” Zero claims are being made beyond that.
The VERY FIRST mention of autism on the page is not until you finish the questionnaire, and it explicitly says:
“As a reminder this is an assessment for Monotropism, a trait sometimes associated with Autism, not Autism directly. If you score high, please be sure to do further research into Monotropism, more information can be found: https://monotropism.org/“
posted by brook horse at 1:35 PM on June 1 [9 favorites]
One of the reasons why I'm expressing a strong negative reaction is because the disclaimer before the test started off with:
> I am not a doctor. I am a bored webdev who thinks self-diagnosing is valid.
I know there are many excellent reasons for people in the autism community especially to feel strongly that self-diagnosis is valid. But I happen to strongly disagree with that statement *in general* (not specific to autism) because of my personal experiences - one teen and two adults in my orbit have been sucked into seriously wacko internet subcultures through validation and encouragement given for their ever more florid self diagnoses.
Sorry - I know my strong words aren't fair to those on here who do have valid reasons to need and support self diagnoses of autism. People with autism deserve to get validation and affirmation, and it's not fair to make anyone in this community feel like they're just faking it.
I wonder if we can see this as a both/and situation? If someone finds value in this quiz, if it gives you the reassurance and validation you need, more power to you. At the same time, I think it's reasonable for a lay person to be skeptical of, and question the truth value of, informal internet quizzes.. especially ones that begin with that kind of disclaimer.
posted by MiraK at 1:42 PM on June 1
> I am not a doctor. I am a bored webdev who thinks self-diagnosing is valid.
I know there are many excellent reasons for people in the autism community especially to feel strongly that self-diagnosis is valid. But I happen to strongly disagree with that statement *in general* (not specific to autism) because of my personal experiences - one teen and two adults in my orbit have been sucked into seriously wacko internet subcultures through validation and encouragement given for their ever more florid self diagnoses.
Sorry - I know my strong words aren't fair to those on here who do have valid reasons to need and support self diagnoses of autism. People with autism deserve to get validation and affirmation, and it's not fair to make anyone in this community feel like they're just faking it.
I wonder if we can see this as a both/and situation? If someone finds value in this quiz, if it gives you the reassurance and validation you need, more power to you. At the same time, I think it's reasonable for a lay person to be skeptical of, and question the truth value of, informal internet quizzes.. especially ones that begin with that kind of disclaimer.
posted by MiraK at 1:42 PM on June 1
It's always fascinating to me when people who have a vested interest in being Neurotypical manipulate themselves into logic pretzels because ' EVERYONE DOES X so I CANNOT POSSIBLY BE NEURO-SPICY '.
Well...
Babes..
C'mere.
I've got bad news for ya - well it might be good news* , but it obvious to everyone except you ..
[All the *best* people are NeuroSpicy - who'd wanna be NeuroBland ?]
posted by Faintdreams at 1:43 PM on June 1 [7 favorites]
Well...
Babes..
C'mere.
I've got bad news for ya - well it might be good news* , but it obvious to everyone except you ..
[All the *best* people are NeuroSpicy - who'd wanna be NeuroBland ?]
posted by Faintdreams at 1:43 PM on June 1 [7 favorites]
I score very high on this test and it’s hard for me to understand/believe that others don’t so i am very interested in hearing from people who don’t score high in monotropism!
2.19, more Monotropic than about 1% of autistic people and about 5% of allistic people, so I guess Im pretty far to the left.
What are things from this test that feel like they captured what is characteristic of me? Facility with frequent task-switching, confident decision-making, ability to focus in multiple environments, no stress or anxiety related to different kinds of external stimuli. I do have some social anxiety and tend to ruminate on conversations ad nauseum, but I compensate by being personable and talkative on a variety of subjects, even though I dont prefer it and even though Im not usually interested.
From the perspective of attention, I would say that I can easily switch the ... lens of my focus to be disperse or laser tight. This is actually a rewarding feeling for me, to go from lightning-quick small decisions to taking a deep breath and analyzing the whole picture, then on to something else or back into this task to completion.
posted by Illusory contour at 1:44 PM on June 1 [7 favorites]
2.19, more Monotropic than about 1% of autistic people and about 5% of allistic people, so I guess Im pretty far to the left.
What are things from this test that feel like they captured what is characteristic of me? Facility with frequent task-switching, confident decision-making, ability to focus in multiple environments, no stress or anxiety related to different kinds of external stimuli. I do have some social anxiety and tend to ruminate on conversations ad nauseum, but I compensate by being personable and talkative on a variety of subjects, even though I dont prefer it and even though Im not usually interested.
From the perspective of attention, I would say that I can easily switch the ... lens of my focus to be disperse or laser tight. This is actually a rewarding feeling for me, to go from lightning-quick small decisions to taking a deep breath and analyzing the whole picture, then on to something else or back into this task to completion.
posted by Illusory contour at 1:44 PM on June 1 [7 favorites]
One of the reasons why I'm expressing a strong negative reaction is because the disclaimer before the test started off with:
You are misreading the situation. Please read the entire page.
“ Thank you for the team involved in this study for putting together the questionnaire, and all those who have made suggestions and helped make this app better.
Questions taken directly from: https://osf.io/4wru2 and scored based on their findings.
Original License info: This questionnaire is published under a Creative Commons license, CC-BY-NC-SA. Full text for this license can be found on the Creative Commons website here.
Original Credit: Garau, V., Woods, R., Chown, N., Hallett, S., Murray, F.,Wood, R.,Murray, A.& Fletcher-Watson, S. (2023). The Monotropism Questionnaire, Open Science Framework. This is a pre-print, meaning it is currently awaiting peer review.
I do not own the questions, or content in the questions; I do not store or collect this information; please see the source code if you are concerned, it is open source. All processing is done in your browser, in memory. No data will ever be sent to me, or anyone else. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions please go to the github repo here and submit an issue, and I will be glad to assist!
All this site is for is to make taking the questionnaire easier, and I was bored, and too lazy to tally up the score myself... and yes I know that making this site was far more work than just doing a bit of adding...”
The QUESTIONNAIRE was created and validated by scientists. The WEB PAGE, which automatically scores the questionnaire (which previously had to be hand scored) is made by a web dev who is not a doctor. The content and distribution data are all from autism researchers; the literal clickable buttons are the only thing attributable to this web dev.
posted by brook horse at 1:46 PM on June 1 [16 favorites]
You are misreading the situation. Please read the entire page.
“ Thank you for the team involved in this study for putting together the questionnaire, and all those who have made suggestions and helped make this app better.
Questions taken directly from: https://osf.io/4wru2 and scored based on their findings.
Original License info: This questionnaire is published under a Creative Commons license, CC-BY-NC-SA. Full text for this license can be found on the Creative Commons website here.
Original Credit: Garau, V., Woods, R., Chown, N., Hallett, S., Murray, F.,Wood, R.,Murray, A.& Fletcher-Watson, S. (2023). The Monotropism Questionnaire, Open Science Framework. This is a pre-print, meaning it is currently awaiting peer review.
I do not own the questions, or content in the questions; I do not store or collect this information; please see the source code if you are concerned, it is open source. All processing is done in your browser, in memory. No data will ever be sent to me, or anyone else. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions please go to the github repo here and submit an issue, and I will be glad to assist!
All this site is for is to make taking the questionnaire easier, and I was bored, and too lazy to tally up the score myself... and yes I know that making this site was far more work than just doing a bit of adding...”
The QUESTIONNAIRE was created and validated by scientists. The WEB PAGE, which automatically scores the questionnaire (which previously had to be hand scored) is made by a web dev who is not a doctor. The content and distribution data are all from autism researchers; the literal clickable buttons are the only thing attributable to this web dev.
posted by brook horse at 1:46 PM on June 1 [16 favorites]
(Going back to a previous subthread — about whether we’re looking at a "normal distribution". The mathematical object called a "normal distribution" is a symmetrical hill, but also an infinitely wide one both ways. The "tails" are unbounded. It's not unusual for the mathematical results of trimming off arbitrarily-thin tails to be huge and counterintuitive. Usefully connecting infinite mathematical objects and countable observations is — quite a lot of statistics AIUI)
posted by clew at 2:06 PM on June 1
posted by clew at 2:06 PM on June 1
In the spirit of sharing, I scored 1.96, so even more to the left/allistic side of the distribution. Which didn't surprise me as I've never experienced the kind of things people here are describing. Task switching is easy and seamless for me, regardless of the environment, as one example. Similarly, I don't know that I ever experience overload from too many options during decision making -- honestly for me it can be fun?
What I found interesting from the distributions was the amount of overlap between the allistic and autustic sides, which underscores what brook horse has been trying to say that this is not any sort of binary, but rather a continuum with some clusters.
posted by DiscourseMarker at 2:30 PM on June 1 [9 favorites]
What I found interesting from the distributions was the amount of overlap between the allistic and autustic sides, which underscores what brook horse has been trying to say that this is not any sort of binary, but rather a continuum with some clusters.
posted by DiscourseMarker at 2:30 PM on June 1 [9 favorites]
I scored 3.39, putting me close to the average autistic person. This is consistent with other similar tests over the years.
I also score highly on tests for ADHD traits.
I'm in my 50s so these kinds of easy online tests weren't accessible or even existent until I was well into my 30s and 40s, and I generally feel I would have answered them in more extreme ways as a teenager. Over time I've learned to manage in various ways. I hear the kids call this "masking".
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 2:33 PM on June 1 [9 favorites]
I also score highly on tests for ADHD traits.
I'm in my 50s so these kinds of easy online tests weren't accessible or even existent until I was well into my 30s and 40s, and I generally feel I would have answered them in more extreme ways as a teenager. Over time I've learned to manage in various ways. I hear the kids call this "masking".
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 2:33 PM on June 1 [9 favorites]
METAFILTER: rather a continuum with some clusters
posted by philip-random at 3:02 PM on June 1 [3 favorites]
posted by philip-random at 3:02 PM on June 1 [3 favorites]
It's always fascinating to me when people who have a vested interest in being Neurotypical manipulate themselves into logic pretzels because ' EVERYONE DOES X so I CANNOT POSSIBLY BE NEURO-SPICY '.
It's not a good look to diagnose people with autism over the internet because you happen to disagree with them on what exactly constitutes the varied thing we call the human experience (and these people may or may not have made any kind of statement about where they personally believe they fall on the autism spectrum).
posted by ssg at 3:09 PM on June 1 [3 favorites]
It's not a good look to diagnose people with autism over the internet because you happen to disagree with them on what exactly constitutes the varied thing we call the human experience (and these people may or may not have made any kind of statement about where they personally believe they fall on the autism spectrum).
posted by ssg at 3:09 PM on June 1 [3 favorites]
Over time I've learned to manage in various ways. I hear the kids call this "masking"
Yup. I fight with questionnaires (at least mentally) and add my own frame of “I’m answering this according to my natural preferences/ if I had my druthers and didn’t have to manage every damn thing related to this.” Perimenopause and pandemic just kicked the shit out of my ability to mask. But a lot of what I see on this list resonates with me when I am out of energy to compensate.
posted by MonkeyToes at 3:22 PM on June 1 [6 favorites]
Yup. I fight with questionnaires (at least mentally) and add my own frame of “I’m answering this according to my natural preferences/ if I had my druthers and didn’t have to manage every damn thing related to this.” Perimenopause and pandemic just kicked the shit out of my ability to mask. But a lot of what I see on this list resonates with me when I am out of energy to compensate.
posted by MonkeyToes at 3:22 PM on June 1 [6 favorites]
ssg: "It's not a good look to diagnose people with autism over the internet because you happen to disagree with them on what exactly constitutes the varied thing we call the human experience (and these people may or may not have made any kind of statement about where they personally believe they fall on the autism spectrum)."
Strange. Don't think that's what I was doing but you do you I guess ? ::shrug::
I'mma go about my neurospicy way and be happy. :)
posted by Faintdreams at 3:54 PM on June 1
Strange. Don't think that's what I was doing but you do you I guess ? ::shrug::
I'mma go about my neurospicy way and be happy. :)
posted by Faintdreams at 3:54 PM on June 1
I found these explanations of monotropism helpful.
I would guess that I'm on the allistic left side of the curve, I'll take the quiz later and see if my guess is correct. "ooh shiny thing" generally makes me intrigued rather than overwhelmed. I am currently struggling with working from home because there are so many visual reminders of house chores or little tasks (return the library books! get more composting worms! de-fur the carpet!) and it's impossible to herd my brain into more focused work.
Also I think "tropism" is making me think of plants growing toward the light (I'm looking at you, spindly polka dot plant). As a (probable) polytropic person I am sending out shoots in all directions, even where there's not that much light? Metaphor just ran aground I think.
posted by spamandkimchi at 4:03 PM on June 1 [2 favorites]
I would guess that I'm on the allistic left side of the curve, I'll take the quiz later and see if my guess is correct. "ooh shiny thing" generally makes me intrigued rather than overwhelmed. I am currently struggling with working from home because there are so many visual reminders of house chores or little tasks (return the library books! get more composting worms! de-fur the carpet!) and it's impossible to herd my brain into more focused work.
Also I think "tropism" is making me think of plants growing toward the light (I'm looking at you, spindly polka dot plant). As a (probable) polytropic person I am sending out shoots in all directions, even where there's not that much light? Metaphor just ran aground I think.
posted by spamandkimchi at 4:03 PM on June 1 [2 favorites]
4.6
you are more Monotropic than about 91% of autistic people and about 100% of allistic people based on data from the initial validation study.
I was diagnosed as AuDHD two years ago.
posted by anansi at 4:05 PM on June 1 [3 favorites]
you are more Monotropic than about 91% of autistic people and about 100% of allistic people based on data from the initial validation study.
I was diagnosed as AuDHD two years ago.
posted by anansi at 4:05 PM on June 1 [3 favorites]
4.6 here, and huh, I would not have bet that I was that far on that side of the bell curve for even folks with diagnosed autism, let alone people in general. I do have an adult ADHD diagnosis; I actually was evaluated for autism in middle school, and have lowkey tended to assume that the "probably don't have it" conclusion may have been affected by some of the mid-90s assumptions about how autism (and ADHD) Should Look. Some of the traits that triggered the evaluation (all the way down to the stereotypical issues with eye contact) certainly remain, and others I've just developed coping strategies for...
Obviously questions oversimplify things - they always do. And there're points where other traits may be confounding factors. For example, looking solely at focus, I really don't have a "work like a normal person mode" - I have a "work for 12 hours and forget to eat" mode and a "bounce between 20 tasks like an early-2000s Roomba" mode. But while in the latter case, one could say that I'm sorta switching between tasks easily, it's important to be clear that I'm not switching effectively and with intention (as described by DiscourseMaker or illusory contour), I'm just constantly getting derailed. And for the hyperfocused mode, I'm bad at correctly directing that focus: it's sorta like attaching a neodynium magnet to a string and using it to fish blindly through a junk drawer. It may stick to nothing, and if it sticks to anything I have no idea what it'll be, but whatever it sticks to it is gonna stick strongly. There are ways these experiences may differ from someone who might score highly on monotropism but who doesn't have my more ADHD-inflected tendencies.
So yeah, our tools may not be perfect, and they absolutely do reflect experiences that are part of a spectrum of things that all people can occasionally experience. But they do consistently suggest that me - and people like me - are at one extreme in how frequent/intense/disruptive/inescapable these behaviors and traits can be. And frankly, for a whole bunch of reasons, that's helpful for me to know, no matter what name you slap on it.
posted by ASF Tod und Schwerkraft at 4:13 PM on June 1 [7 favorites]
Obviously questions oversimplify things - they always do. And there're points where other traits may be confounding factors. For example, looking solely at focus, I really don't have a "work like a normal person mode" - I have a "work for 12 hours and forget to eat" mode and a "bounce between 20 tasks like an early-2000s Roomba" mode. But while in the latter case, one could say that I'm sorta switching between tasks easily, it's important to be clear that I'm not switching effectively and with intention (as described by DiscourseMaker or illusory contour), I'm just constantly getting derailed. And for the hyperfocused mode, I'm bad at correctly directing that focus: it's sorta like attaching a neodynium magnet to a string and using it to fish blindly through a junk drawer. It may stick to nothing, and if it sticks to anything I have no idea what it'll be, but whatever it sticks to it is gonna stick strongly. There are ways these experiences may differ from someone who might score highly on monotropism but who doesn't have my more ADHD-inflected tendencies.
So yeah, our tools may not be perfect, and they absolutely do reflect experiences that are part of a spectrum of things that all people can occasionally experience. But they do consistently suggest that me - and people like me - are at one extreme in how frequent/intense/disruptive/inescapable these behaviors and traits can be. And frankly, for a whole bunch of reasons, that's helpful for me to know, no matter what name you slap on it.
posted by ASF Tod und Schwerkraft at 4:13 PM on June 1 [7 favorites]
3.38. Not terribly surprising since when I read autistic folks on social media saying "Do you do the thing where (whatever)" my reaction is "doesn't everybody...wait..."
posted by The Ardship of Cambry at 4:18 PM on June 1 [3 favorites]
posted by The Ardship of Cambry at 4:18 PM on June 1 [3 favorites]
Monotropism Score: 195 / 235
Your Average: 4.15
When/where do we order jackets?
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:46 PM on June 1 [6 favorites]
Your Average: 4.15
When/where do we order jackets?
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:46 PM on June 1 [6 favorites]
On the fifth attempt i made it through the quiz. 3.35. I don't have trouble reading / conversing / empathizing with other people. I got that gene, thankfully. And I stopped rambling about my interests verbally like 40 years ago because literally no one fucking cares, and that kind of negative reinforcement sinks in after a while. On the other hand i will be extremely sassy if you interrupt me while on task, especially for some garbage reason. Like asking if I need help. Bitch if I wanted your help I'd ask for it.
Also I found a couple questions at odds with each themselves -- particularly the one that said if I have problems with busy / unpredictable situations. Those are very different things. I can laser focus in a coffee shop, which is busy but it's predictably busy, no one is going to interrupt me. But I cannot focus in a situation when I'm alone and it is quiet when I feel like someone or something is going to bug me, like a phone call, or an appointment.
So the questions need a bit of refinement.
Also I stopped rocking/stimming when I was like six? seven? Because my dad was Not Having It. So that behaviour is completely extinguished.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:09 PM on June 1 [4 favorites]
Also I found a couple questions at odds with each themselves -- particularly the one that said if I have problems with busy / unpredictable situations. Those are very different things. I can laser focus in a coffee shop, which is busy but it's predictably busy, no one is going to interrupt me. But I cannot focus in a situation when I'm alone and it is quiet when I feel like someone or something is going to bug me, like a phone call, or an appointment.
So the questions need a bit of refinement.
Also I stopped rocking/stimming when I was like six? seven? Because my dad was Not Having It. So that behaviour is completely extinguished.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:09 PM on June 1 [4 favorites]
When I take quizzes like this, I keep in mind that as an autistic adult who has arranged my life to avoid stress, it's easy to forget how tough things are for me in the "typical" world. For instance, I work part-time from home and go to my college campus once a week. It's manageable for me, barely. But I'd burn out in under a month if I had to work 40 hours a week in a noisy shared office and attend regular social events.
So as you go through the questions, imagine what life is like without compensation!
posted by lloquat at 5:21 PM on June 1 [9 favorites]
So as you go through the questions, imagine what life is like without compensation!
posted by lloquat at 5:21 PM on June 1 [9 favorites]
Strangely happy here that someone brought up the Difficulty of Grocery Shopping. Reminded me of when a friend and I moved across the country for our first Real Job after college, and the first time we went to the grocery store to stock up our pantry. My god! He could just choose things from the shelf! He didn't just wander around looking and things and contemplating them and then sheepishly leave after half an hour without buying anything. It was... just remarkable!
I don't think he really understood -- or maybe he thought I was joking -- when I told him how impressed I was.
Scored a 4.30 on the test, go figure. Lived a pretty good life though so far, knock on wood.
posted by brambleboy at 5:30 PM on June 1 [6 favorites]
I don't think he really understood -- or maybe he thought I was joking -- when I told him how impressed I was.
Scored a 4.30 on the test, go figure. Lived a pretty good life though so far, knock on wood.
posted by brambleboy at 5:30 PM on June 1 [6 favorites]
I am sitting here with a finger of Taylor Fladgate and wondering ... how would your answers to the test change after a drink? Two?
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:32 PM on June 1 [1 favorite]
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:32 PM on June 1 [1 favorite]
^Taylor Fladgate the port wine, not the social-media influencer turned thespian
posted by Iris Gambol at 6:03 PM on June 1 [3 favorites]
posted by Iris Gambol at 6:03 PM on June 1 [3 favorites]
My ADHD was diagnosed in middle age. I took this test; now I'm sitting here, and having a think.
posted by Iris Gambol at 6:08 PM on June 1 [4 favorites]
posted by Iris Gambol at 6:08 PM on June 1 [4 favorites]
Way back from the very beginning of the thread: I found it very difficult to find when or what the point of that was. I gave up because it seemed to circling something it did not want to say what it actually is.
This is... interesting... because I found Murray's essay both very clear and very relatable. I wonder if this is a demonstration of the good old double empathy problem -- it's really hard to understand someone else's lived experience when it's totally orthogonal to one's own.
posted by heatherlogan at 9:11 PM on June 1 [8 favorites]
This is... interesting... because I found Murray's essay both very clear and very relatable. I wonder if this is a demonstration of the good old double empathy problem -- it's really hard to understand someone else's lived experience when it's totally orthogonal to one's own.
posted by heatherlogan at 9:11 PM on June 1 [8 favorites]
In Geeks, Genes, and the Evolution of Asperger Syndrome , the authors propose the hypothesis that autistic infants either direct their mono tropic attention towards developing language, resulting in the classic Asperger presentation, or, they don't, resulting in classical autism.
When you're a 40 something aspie parent of a nonverbal autistic child, and you literally had to get a college grade education in physics before being able to skate safely on ice, while your nonverbal child is just this close to taking up parkour, you tend to think they are on to something.
posted by ocschwar at 9:28 PM on June 1 [9 favorites]
When you're a 40 something aspie parent of a nonverbal autistic child, and you literally had to get a college grade education in physics before being able to skate safely on ice, while your nonverbal child is just this close to taking up parkour, you tend to think they are on to something.
posted by ocschwar at 9:28 PM on June 1 [9 favorites]
For those interested in more from Fergus Murray, including a massive roundup of their writings on autism, their blog is here.
posted by heatherlogan at 9:36 PM on June 1 [1 favorite]
posted by heatherlogan at 9:36 PM on June 1 [1 favorite]
"do other people say you're not normal"
I hate these kind of questions. No, other people rarely tell me things about myself because I'm fairly isolated by choice (we live states away from family and no close friends) and I avoid social situations as much as I can due to anxiety; and I mask as well as I can when I do have to interact with people. I'm sure there probably are people who think I'm not normal, but there's nobody who knows me well enough to get away with saying so to my face. (Other than my husband, but my weird works very nicely with his weird so he's not about to go casting stones at this point.)
4.04 on the test which is not surprising. I have diagnosed ADHD with a lot of autistic traits but no diagnosis for that. Most of the online tests have a lot of frustratingly-worded questions that don't leave room for nuance or "it depends" kinds of answers. I've heard it said that autistics are actually likely to find those tests frustrating because many autistics need to be precise and the multiple-choice answers don't allow that. For that reason I was heartened by this statement from antinomia above:
An actual assessment consists of a very long conversation (usually over many visits) with a therapist, where the therapist is expecting to get plenty of these sorts of questions and they have clarifying examples ready for you.
That's almost enough to convince me to get an actual assessment. I mean I probably won't, because it'd mostly be to satisfy my curiousity about "why the hell am I like this" but I wouldn't use an autism diagnosis for anything useful so no sense spending the money & time.
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 9:46 PM on June 1 [2 favorites]
I hate these kind of questions. No, other people rarely tell me things about myself because I'm fairly isolated by choice (we live states away from family and no close friends) and I avoid social situations as much as I can due to anxiety; and I mask as well as I can when I do have to interact with people. I'm sure there probably are people who think I'm not normal, but there's nobody who knows me well enough to get away with saying so to my face. (Other than my husband, but my weird works very nicely with his weird so he's not about to go casting stones at this point.)
4.04 on the test which is not surprising. I have diagnosed ADHD with a lot of autistic traits but no diagnosis for that. Most of the online tests have a lot of frustratingly-worded questions that don't leave room for nuance or "it depends" kinds of answers. I've heard it said that autistics are actually likely to find those tests frustrating because many autistics need to be precise and the multiple-choice answers don't allow that. For that reason I was heartened by this statement from antinomia above:
An actual assessment consists of a very long conversation (usually over many visits) with a therapist, where the therapist is expecting to get plenty of these sorts of questions and they have clarifying examples ready for you.
That's almost enough to convince me to get an actual assessment. I mean I probably won't, because it'd mostly be to satisfy my curiousity about "why the hell am I like this" but I wouldn't use an autism diagnosis for anything useful so no sense spending the money & time.
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 9:46 PM on June 1 [2 favorites]
Autism assessments do vary quite a lot depending on where in the world you are.
They definitely should be as antinomia describes, but sometimes they're much less thorough.
My advice, if you're wondering wether or not you're autistic, is: don't waste time with online screening tests. Read /watch/listen to autistic people, and send time in autistic online spaces. If you want to exclude other possible causes for what seems like autistic traits, see a neurodivergent affirming and trauma informed therapist.
Some resources you might find helpful:
The Neurodivergent Woman Podcast hosted by a neurodivergent clinical psychologist and a neurotypical neuropsychologist. Useful for people of all genders.
Neurodivergent Insights has a lot of helpful resources, especially the Misdiagnosis Mondays
posted by Zumbador at 10:05 PM on June 1 [6 favorites]
They definitely should be as antinomia describes, but sometimes they're much less thorough.
My advice, if you're wondering wether or not you're autistic, is: don't waste time with online screening tests. Read /watch/listen to autistic people, and send time in autistic online spaces. If you want to exclude other possible causes for what seems like autistic traits, see a neurodivergent affirming and trauma informed therapist.
Some resources you might find helpful:
The Neurodivergent Woman Podcast hosted by a neurodivergent clinical psychologist and a neurotypical neuropsychologist. Useful for people of all genders.
Neurodivergent Insights has a lot of helpful resources, especially the Misdiagnosis Mondays
posted by Zumbador at 10:05 PM on June 1 [6 favorites]
3.72, almost precisely where the probability densities are equal.
This corresponds with my lived experience. I struggle with socializing, loud noises, task switching, big decisions, etc. But I have discussed social anxiety and other issues at length with therapists, and they never brought up autism.
When watching "Love on the Spectrum", I felt a lot of kinship with some of the challenges shown, but I also recognized that my version is comparatively mild.
Sometimes I wonder how others' assessment of me would change if my chosen hyperfocus topics were not socially acceptable, "productive" things.
posted by scose at 10:22 PM on June 1 [2 favorites]
This corresponds with my lived experience. I struggle with socializing, loud noises, task switching, big decisions, etc. But I have discussed social anxiety and other issues at length with therapists, and they never brought up autism.
When watching "Love on the Spectrum", I felt a lot of kinship with some of the challenges shown, but I also recognized that my version is comparatively mild.
Sometimes I wonder how others' assessment of me would change if my chosen hyperfocus topics were not socially acceptable, "productive" things.
posted by scose at 10:22 PM on June 1 [2 favorites]
4.49 and diagnosed with autism about 10 years ago.
posted by a humble nudibranch at 11:21 PM on June 1 [1 favorite]
posted by a humble nudibranch at 11:21 PM on June 1 [1 favorite]
"Feeling feelings is abusive" is a new take. Shocked at some of the ignorant and offensive comments that were allowed to stand in this thread.
(Scored 4 and change, smack bang in the middle of the autistic population, suspected autism/AuDHD.)
posted by Dysk at 12:06 AM on June 2 [9 favorites]
(Scored 4 and change, smack bang in the middle of the autistic population, suspected autism/AuDHD.)
posted by Dysk at 12:06 AM on June 2 [9 favorites]
I ran it again as if I was my 18 old self..
Monotropism Score: 201 / 235
Your Average: 4.28
I find it difficult to engage in a task of no interest to me even if it is important
I still have a high school report card that says "Unearthed consistently shows zero interest in things that he cannot see a use for".
Fortunately a lot of people pointed me in better directions, the earliest a Jehovah's Witness friend who told me I turned conversations around to suit myself.
I've been able to change most things but I still hate noise (fortunately my wife is the same), and we have no tv or stereo. I once told a neighbour to turn his dog off.
posted by unearthed at 2:28 AM on June 2 [5 favorites]
Monotropism Score: 201 / 235
Your Average: 4.28
I find it difficult to engage in a task of no interest to me even if it is important
I still have a high school report card that says "Unearthed consistently shows zero interest in things that he cannot see a use for".
Fortunately a lot of people pointed me in better directions, the earliest a Jehovah's Witness friend who told me I turned conversations around to suit myself.
I've been able to change most things but I still hate noise (fortunately my wife is the same), and we have no tv or stereo. I once told a neighbour to turn his dog off.
posted by unearthed at 2:28 AM on June 2 [5 favorites]
Can I just say how grateful I am for brook horse in this thread? I probably should have done some of the work they did here but I’m grateful I didn’t have to threadsit and it still got done!
I haven’t been around here much lately but I thought this was really cool and wanted to share it. Then the first four or five comments (since deleted) were all pissy derails and noise, and I noped out. Very glad to come back to this wonderful discussion!
posted by anotherpanacea at 3:57 AM on June 2 [24 favorites]
I haven’t been around here much lately but I thought this was really cool and wanted to share it. Then the first four or five comments (since deleted) were all pissy derails and noise, and I noped out. Very glad to come back to this wonderful discussion!
posted by anotherpanacea at 3:57 AM on June 2 [24 favorites]
A loud and appreciative Amen to the good words of anotherpanacea. Many thanks brook horse you did a great job. Thanks to all participants too - I learnt a great deal from this discussion.
posted by dutchrick at 4:04 AM on June 2 [7 favorites]
posted by dutchrick at 4:04 AM on June 2 [7 favorites]
Thanks for this interesting post anotherpanacea, and thank you brook horse for your enlightening and informed comments. Mention of BAP "in family members of autistic individuals" is also, for me, helpful. A grandkid was referred to be tested for asd recently and really, in my family as both a child and a parent you'd be an outlier if the long list of possible signs they gave us didn't apply to you. I am beyond grateful that the perfectly ordinary school the kid goes to has this provision and associated attitude to pastoral care.
The discussion in comments is also valuable, providing confirmation of several things I believe anyway:
* That the years provide strategies of making oneself comfortable, so quiz answers are going to be affected by how far coping strategies have been internalised. Me being over the middle-aged hill into old, my life is arranged to not bump into things I find uncomfortable. Whether this is more or less dysfunctional, who cares? In answering the quiz questions for things which once would have been disturbing, or which are entirely contextual (are they nice people? Do they have interesting thoughts? That make sense?) I tended to put 'neither agree nor disagree' for those.
* That parenting will often force a person with little tolerance for unpredictability to try to put up with it. That, too, becomes internalised.
* That early exposure to change and difference also forces accommodation, accelerating masking.
and thanks also, seanmpuckett, JZig and i_am_joe's_spleen, your comments chimed with me a lot.
Experiences: 3.65 in the test. I was not beaten out of my stim but was slightly shamed out of it by secondary school: nobody knows I still do it.
I am biracial/completely bicultural and until I was in my 50s assumed that any awkwardnesses I might have had with communication, social situations, knowing people had found me odd was due to that. And it still may be? Asd in women has been more talked about lately so that has made me think, as has stuff about the grandkid. I wrote an ask about it recently, think it was anon but don't care really, this post has been informative with regard to that somewhat clumsily expressed query.
PS. Holding eye contact throughout a 1-to-1 conversation makes the other party unsettled. The thing to do is look away sometimes and then glance back. Thats what they do.
posted by glasseyes at 4:49 AM on June 2 [11 favorites]
The discussion in comments is also valuable, providing confirmation of several things I believe anyway:
* That the years provide strategies of making oneself comfortable, so quiz answers are going to be affected by how far coping strategies have been internalised. Me being over the middle-aged hill into old, my life is arranged to not bump into things I find uncomfortable. Whether this is more or less dysfunctional, who cares? In answering the quiz questions for things which once would have been disturbing, or which are entirely contextual (are they nice people? Do they have interesting thoughts? That make sense?) I tended to put 'neither agree nor disagree' for those.
* That parenting will often force a person with little tolerance for unpredictability to try to put up with it. That, too, becomes internalised.
* That early exposure to change and difference also forces accommodation, accelerating masking.
and thanks also, seanmpuckett, JZig and i_am_joe's_spleen, your comments chimed with me a lot.
Experiences: 3.65 in the test. I was not beaten out of my stim but was slightly shamed out of it by secondary school: nobody knows I still do it.
I am biracial/completely bicultural and until I was in my 50s assumed that any awkwardnesses I might have had with communication, social situations, knowing people had found me odd was due to that. And it still may be? Asd in women has been more talked about lately so that has made me think, as has stuff about the grandkid. I wrote an ask about it recently, think it was anon but don't care really, this post has been informative with regard to that somewhat clumsily expressed query.
PS. Holding eye contact throughout a 1-to-1 conversation makes the other party unsettled. The thing to do is look away sometimes and then glance back. Thats what they do.
posted by glasseyes at 4:49 AM on June 2 [11 favorites]
Absolutely reiterating those thanks to anotherpanacea and brook horse
posted by glasseyes at 4:54 AM on June 2 [1 favorite]
posted by glasseyes at 4:54 AM on June 2 [1 favorite]
Monotropism Score: 226 / 235
Your Average: 4.81
This score suggests that you are more Monotropic than about 98% of autistic people and about 100% of allistic people based on data from the initial validation study.
I've thought for some time that there was something more about my failure to do most things 'easily', 'correctly' or 'successfully' than simple lack of willpower + determination, maybe this explains something. Over the years I've suspected that I have some combination of autism and ADHD but virtually everyone I've ever brought the idea up to over the years (including former life-partners, doctors and my now-retired and otherwise very supportive psychoanalyst) refused to take the idea seriously at all.
posted by remembrancer at 6:08 AM on June 2 [10 favorites]
Your Average: 4.81
This score suggests that you are more Monotropic than about 98% of autistic people and about 100% of allistic people based on data from the initial validation study.
I've thought for some time that there was something more about my failure to do most things 'easily', 'correctly' or 'successfully' than simple lack of willpower + determination, maybe this explains something. Over the years I've suspected that I have some combination of autism and ADHD but virtually everyone I've ever brought the idea up to over the years (including former life-partners, doctors and my now-retired and otherwise very supportive psychoanalyst) refused to take the idea seriously at all.
posted by remembrancer at 6:08 AM on June 2 [10 favorites]
3.66; more monotropic than 8% of autistic people and 80% of allistic people and also very close to where the PDs for both groups are equal. Plus right on the cusp of boomer and X. Quite pleased with both those ambiguities.
The eye contact question was fun for me because it's something I worked out how to do as a kid in order to help me lie convincingly to my mother. The technique involves picking one of the subject's eyes to fix my gaze on while deliberately defocusing enough that the eye I'm looking at goes blurry. And yeah, as noted above, holding it for lengthy stretches comes across as weird.
posted by flabdablet at 6:25 AM on June 2 [4 favorites]
The eye contact question was fun for me because it's something I worked out how to do as a kid in order to help me lie convincingly to my mother. The technique involves picking one of the subject's eyes to fix my gaze on while deliberately defocusing enough that the eye I'm looking at goes blurry. And yeah, as noted above, holding it for lengthy stretches comes across as weird.
posted by flabdablet at 6:25 AM on June 2 [4 favorites]
Oh yeah, and I feel grumpy as fuck when yoinked out of something I'm concentrating on in order to solve some other problem for somebody else, and masking that is occasionally not very successful. This was a bit of a liability while I was employed as a programmer, because even quite short interruptions so instantly smashed whatever delicate mental model I'd been juggling and ruined my productivity. Oddly, the one time I was given the opportunity to try pair programming, that effect went away completely.
posted by flabdablet at 6:30 AM on June 2 [7 favorites]
posted by flabdablet at 6:30 AM on June 2 [7 favorites]
Thanks everyone for the appreciative comments and thoughtful discussion, and anotherpanacea for posting the topic! It’s really a super interesting way to look at how people and brains develop and it can be so helpful for many people. I should probably post a FPP on local vs global processing, which is related, but has more of a focus on visual processing. Those of you who have never been able to learn how to drive and/or can never figure out what the hell people are pointing at, that one will be for you. (But I have to do all my Sunday routines first.)
posted by brook horse at 6:41 AM on June 2 [19 favorites]
posted by brook horse at 6:41 AM on June 2 [19 favorites]
Hah! I am on my balcony eating breakfast and Greg in on my lap walking and I had a realization. When I am anxious, I pet cats. Smooth fur, lovely form, sweet rumble, and you have to pay attention. I have always had cats around to pet.
Petting creatures is socially acceptable stimming.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:02 AM on June 2 [6 favorites]
Petting creatures is socially acceptable stimming.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:02 AM on June 2 [6 favorites]
*Washing. Greg was washing. For some reason my post time stamp is 12 minutes earlier than when I saved. So I couldn’t edit.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:05 AM on June 2 [2 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:05 AM on June 2 [2 favorites]
I suspect my score would be higher on this quiz if I hadn't so thoroughly engineered my life so that my work and primary hobby are two areas of interest that I can sequentially permit to expand to consume all waking hours in a day depending on which one has currently captured my attention the most. Within this specific context, I despise routines, because routines become an interrupting obligation preventing me from fucking around in whichever of those two things is my preference on that day/week/fortnight.
Now, familiar environments and eating the same food when stressed? Heck yeah. But routines can fuck right off. I don't use an alarm clock and I don't want to be beholden to anything, even if my days end up looking uh, remarkably similar (albeit bimodal) when viewed in aggregate.
posted by deludingmyself at 8:25 AM on June 2 [7 favorites]
Now, familiar environments and eating the same food when stressed? Heck yeah. But routines can fuck right off. I don't use an alarm clock and I don't want to be beholden to anything, even if my days end up looking uh, remarkably similar (albeit bimodal) when viewed in aggregate.
posted by deludingmyself at 8:25 AM on June 2 [7 favorites]
Anyway, 4.26 and I really appreciate this frame to think about my own brain. I've been trying to be a little more open about how I operate best in my professional environment lately, step one of which involves thinking about it more, and the tradeoffs between being a good coworker / having the seniority to partially manage a small team of people vs. how those additional interactions with people absolutely crater my productivity sometimes. Lots to mull over here, and I enjoyed reading all the discussion.
posted by deludingmyself at 8:35 AM on June 2 [4 favorites]
posted by deludingmyself at 8:35 AM on June 2 [4 favorites]
I should probably post a FPP on local vs global processing, which is related, but has more of a focus on visual processing. Those of you who have never been able to learn how to drive and/or can never figure out what the hell people are pointing at, that one will be for you.
[playing Borderlands 3 co-op]
taquito boyfriend: can I get a res please
me: yeah hang on let me find you
him: I'm right, I'm literally right there
me: I need to move around a little bit to figure out which one of these identical triangles on the mini-map is my triangle
him: ok I'm right there though, on the ground? you're right next to me
me: here?
him: other way
me: there's too many things on screen to have any idea which one is you, lemme just wiggle around until the "press button to res" text shows up
his character: [despawns]
me: oops, sorry
him: I think I have a way better sense of the scope of your visual processing issues now
posted by taquito sunrise at 8:55 AM on June 2 [8 favorites]
[playing Borderlands 3 co-op]
taquito boyfriend: can I get a res please
me: yeah hang on let me find you
him: I'm right, I'm literally right there
me: I need to move around a little bit to figure out which one of these identical triangles on the mini-map is my triangle
him: ok I'm right there though, on the ground? you're right next to me
me: here?
him: other way
me: there's too many things on screen to have any idea which one is you, lemme just wiggle around until the "press button to res" text shows up
his character: [despawns]
me: oops, sorry
him: I think I have a way better sense of the scope of your visual processing issues now
posted by taquito sunrise at 8:55 AM on June 2 [8 favorites]
Also, as a kid there was nothing I identified with more than this passage from A Study of Scarlet, but I also always puzzled over it, wondering if it meant my mind worked more like a cocaine addict's, or what:
Holmes was certainly not a difficult man to live with. He was quiet in his ways, and his habits were regular. It was rare for him to be up after ten at night, and he had invariably breakfasted and gone out before I rose in the morning. Sometimes he spent his day at the chemical laboratory, sometimes in the dissecting-rooms, and occasionally in long walks, which appeared to take him into the lowest portions of the City. Nothing could exceed his energy when the working fit was upon him; but now and again a reaction would seize him, and for days on end he would lie upon the sofa in the sitting-room, hardly uttering a word or moving a muscle from morning to night. On these occasions I have noticed such a dreamy, vacant expression in his eyes, that I might have suspected him of being addicted to the use of some narcotic, had not the temperance and cleanliness of his whole life forbidden such a notion.posted by deludingmyself at 8:56 AM on June 2 [4 favorites]
This post prompted me to read up further on monotropism. As a self-dianoosed autistic, I don't think trying to make it an all-encompassing theory for autism works. (Not everyone is trying to make it an all-encompassing theory, but some autistic researchers definitely are.) It doesn't fit the physical symptoms well enough in my opinion, particularly sensory-processing disorder and stimming. Stimming is about needing to do something on top of everything else you already have going on. And with sensory processing disorder, it's not that I am too focused on, for instance, the feeling of my fingers touching one another. It's the fact that I can be focused on other things and yet can still absolutely feel my fingers touching one another and my clothes on my body and my tongue in my mouth and misophonia all at the same time. The problem isn't that being conscious of my socks is pulling my attention from the thing I am trying to focus on. A normal person wouldn't consciously feel their socks to start with.
posted by tofu_crouton at 9:57 AM on June 2 [4 favorites]
posted by tofu_crouton at 9:57 AM on June 2 [4 favorites]
Monotropism Score: 187 / 235
Your Average: 3.98
I live as a hermit in a barn.
posted by ob1quixote at 10:18 AM on June 2 [1 favorite]
Your Average: 3.98
I live as a hermit in a barn.
posted by ob1quixote at 10:18 AM on June 2 [1 favorite]
My understanding of how stimming and sensory sensitivities fit into monotropism is that “interest” in this theory is a value-neutral concept. In daily speech it is typically positive, if you are interested in something you on some level want to know more. In monotropism “interest” is more the thing that has caught your attention and which your brain has decided is important, for good or for ill. And the thing about autistic brains is they’re really good at paying extra special hard attention to small, specific things. So your brain is “interested” in the feeling of your socks and the sounds in the room and the feeling of your mouth and is putting all its processing power into those specific feelings, rather than putting a little bit of resources into processing all of the other things in the world.
Part of this can be hard to see because we don’t know what we aren’t processing. For me, I am not processing a ton of visual information that most people are; same with physical body sense. My brain’s resources are focused on other things that it has decided are more important, its “interests.” Basically it’s about the fact that a few things are processed really intensely, instead of everything being processed at the same average level (or roughly thereabouts). It can still be a number of things you’re processing but it will generally be less than what an allistic person is processing on a lower, less intense level.
Stimming I’ve always understood even before monotropism as basically a button to force your brain to focus on something else. Having this one repetitive movement under your control can redirect resources away from whatever Random Specific Sensory Experiences Of The Day to something that is more positive for you in a cognitive/emotional level.
I honestly don’t know how well this tracks with current theory—that’s just how I’ve understood it mostly from experience, talking to other autistics, and clinical practice.
posted by brook horse at 10:44 AM on June 2 [7 favorites]
Part of this can be hard to see because we don’t know what we aren’t processing. For me, I am not processing a ton of visual information that most people are; same with physical body sense. My brain’s resources are focused on other things that it has decided are more important, its “interests.” Basically it’s about the fact that a few things are processed really intensely, instead of everything being processed at the same average level (or roughly thereabouts). It can still be a number of things you’re processing but it will generally be less than what an allistic person is processing on a lower, less intense level.
Stimming I’ve always understood even before monotropism as basically a button to force your brain to focus on something else. Having this one repetitive movement under your control can redirect resources away from whatever Random Specific Sensory Experiences Of The Day to something that is more positive for you in a cognitive/emotional level.
I honestly don’t know how well this tracks with current theory—that’s just how I’ve understood it mostly from experience, talking to other autistics, and clinical practice.
posted by brook horse at 10:44 AM on June 2 [7 favorites]
I got about 1/4 of the way through these comments before I got tired of repeatedly reading bad-faith neurotypical takes.
That said, I found this test fascinating, I have diagnosed ADHD, and while I’m not autistic, and my autistic friends and my doctors back that up, autistic strangers I meet regularly mention that they think I’m autistic. I scored 4.04, so more monotropic than 93% of allistic people and 38% of autistic people. I’m still not autistic, but it makes those strangers’ responses make more sense. They were recognizing cognitive commonalities I have with autistic people and extrapolating.
posted by vim876 at 11:00 AM on June 2 [4 favorites]
That said, I found this test fascinating, I have diagnosed ADHD, and while I’m not autistic, and my autistic friends and my doctors back that up, autistic strangers I meet regularly mention that they think I’m autistic. I scored 4.04, so more monotropic than 93% of allistic people and 38% of autistic people. I’m still not autistic, but it makes those strangers’ responses make more sense. They were recognizing cognitive commonalities I have with autistic people and extrapolating.
posted by vim876 at 11:00 AM on June 2 [4 favorites]
I also don't know how well the monotropism concept captures all aspects of autism or whether it's intended to. I don't know whether an "interest-based nervous system" makes sense exactly, though perhaps this style of thinking results from other factors. I also found this description of the Intense World Theory quite interesting. My sincerest apologies if I am unknowingly posting something problematic or discredited. To be 100% clear, I have no idea if it has been scientifically borne out, but the description of the source of difficulties having to do with hypersensitivity and attentiveness to stimuli (akin to the monotropism description) resonates:
posted by lookoutbelow at 1:14 PM on June 2 [1 favorite]
"In contrast to other deficit-oriented theories of autism, the Intense World Theory points out that enhanced brain functioning may lie at the heart of autism. In this light, autistic individuals may in general – and not only in exceptional cases – exhibit enhanced perception, attention, and memory capabilities and it is in fact these capabilities, which may turn the world too intense and even aversive and lead to many of the autistic symptoms including withdrawal and social avoidance"But above all, the proposed approach for helping children according to these theories strikes me as abundantly humane and sensible as compared to what some people consider "common sense":
"The experimentally based and common neuropathology proposed in the Intense World Theory is hyper-functioning of elementary brain modules, called local neural microcircuits, which are characterized by hyper-reactivity and hyper-plasticity, both of which seem to be caused by a tendency for excitatory neurons to dominate their neighbors. Such hyper-functional microcircuits are proposed to easily become autonomous, leading to runaway information processing, over-specialization in tasks and a hyper-preference syndrome. The proposed core cognitive consequences are hyper-perception, hyper-attention, hyper-memory, functions mediated by the neocortex, and hyper-emotionality, mediated by the hyper-functionality of the limbic system."
"The progression of the disorder is proposed to be driven by overly strong reactions to experiences that drive the brain to a hyper-preference and overly selective state, which becomes more extreme with each new experience and may be particularly accelerated by emotionally charged experiences and trauma. This may lead to obsessively detailed information processing of fragments of the world and an involuntarily and systematic decoupling of the autist from what becomes a painfully intense world."
"The intense world that the autistic person faces could also easily become aversive if the amygdala and related emotional areas are significantly affected with local hyper-functionality. The lack of social interaction in autism may therefore not be because of deficits in the ability to process social and emotional cues, but because a sub-set of cues are overly intense, compulsively attended to, excessively processed and remembered with frightening clarity and intensity. Typical autistic symptoms, such as averted eye gaze, social withdrawal, and lack of communication, may be explained by an initial over-awareness of sensory and social fragments of the environment, which may be so intense, that avoidance is the only refuge."
"However, if it turns out that some or even all of the central claims of the Intense World Theory turn out to be valid, the implications for the progression as well as the treatment of autism are quite far-reaching and in the case of treatment even counter-intuitive to best-intended parental or professional strategies and are thus worth-while of a discussion."I feel as though "common sense" reactions to anxiety (avoidance is bad, face your fears, etc) and desire to avoid situations (i.e. forcing someone to go) can be extremely counter-productive if they ignore the reality that being forced to engage with the world in a state of overwhelm and fear is a damaging experience. I can only wish that all of us sensitive children were treated with more respect and given more autonomy.
"Behavioral treatment according to the Intense World Theory is proposed to focus on filtering the extremes in the intensity of all sensory and emotional exposure as well as relaxation and progressive systematic desensitization to stimuli presentation. The probably most counter-intuitive suggestion that emerges from the Intense World Theory is to surround the child with a highly predictable and calm environment protected from abrupt sensory and emotional transients and surprises for the first years of life to prevent excessive sensory and emotion driven brain development. The child should be introduced to new stimuli and tasks gently and with caution, retracting at any sign of distress. The adoption of a responsive rehabilitation program would ensure that the teacher works carefully to avoid triggering adverse reactions. Introduction to strangers should be controlled, brief, indirect, and as inert as possible."
posted by lookoutbelow at 1:14 PM on June 2 [1 favorite]
Based on careful observation of my own experiences, I think that "intense world theory" has its elements of truth; however, notice how the pull-quotes above are still soaked in deficit-based language and pathologization of autistic ways of being.
No theory that purports to explain autistic "lack of social interaction" is worth anything if it does not take into account the pervasive and immediate negative reactions of non-autistic people (so-called "thin slice judgements") that bias them against interacting positively with autistic people before a social interaction even begins.
posted by heatherlogan at 1:35 PM on June 2 [7 favorites]
No theory that purports to explain autistic "lack of social interaction" is worth anything if it does not take into account the pervasive and immediate negative reactions of non-autistic people (so-called "thin slice judgements") that bias them against interacting positively with autistic people before a social interaction even begins.
posted by heatherlogan at 1:35 PM on June 2 [7 favorites]
I wonder how many here figured themselves out via tests or professional diagnosis, as opposed to, say, books? I read a lot when I was younger, and I found books about mental conditions really fascinating -- The Three Faces of Eve, Sybil, Operators and Things, The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. (Yes, I know the controversies about those, but the relevant thing here is only that I read them and found them objectively fascinating but not personally touching.) Then I came to understand that there's a thing called Great Literature, so I read novels by Dostoevsky and Tolstoy and Fitzgerald and Salinger and Garcia Marquez and Melville... and they were "interesting". Now I know what Great Literature is. Stamped that on my list. Thought provoking at times, but it didn't speak to my core... I was "observing". Then, in graduate school, I read Donna Williams' Nobody Nowhere, and I was sobbing and sobbing.... I felt it; those experiences spoke to me. Even though my life trajectory was utterly different, and I have been blessed in so many ways she wasn't. Anyway, at that point, I knew what I needed to know.
These kinds of tests, and labels or concepts like Aspergers or Monotropism or Intense World, help put a fine point on it, dissect the varieties, and suggest life strategies. But the most telling thing for me still is the recognition of a shared emotional experience.
posted by brambleboy at 4:07 PM on June 2 [2 favorites]
These kinds of tests, and labels or concepts like Aspergers or Monotropism or Intense World, help put a fine point on it, dissect the varieties, and suggest life strategies. But the most telling thing for me still is the recognition of a shared emotional experience.
posted by brambleboy at 4:07 PM on June 2 [2 favorites]
Monotropism Score: 151 / 235Interestingly this appears to put me a bit below average on MeFi! I share some traits with autistic folks (noticing flickering lights/sounds nobody else does, strong aptitude in certain fields, ability to hyperfocus) and the wide overlap in distribution curves really reinforces my feeling that there's no real "normal". Back in the 50s, the US Air Force decided to make an ejection seat for pilots, so they went about collecting a bunch of biometric data and built a one centered around the "average" person... only to discover that nobody fit. In the end, they made the chairs individually adjustable for pilots. Many people probably have an internal dial or two turned up to 11 compared to the general population and I think one takeaway here is that instead of trying to fit everybody into a mold, it's more important to just let people find their niche.
Your Average: 3.21
This score suggests that you are more Monotropic than about 1% of autistic people and about 52% of allistic people based on data from the initial validation study.
posted by ndr at 12:57 AM on June 3 [3 favorites]
My results:
Monotropism Score: 210 / 235
Your Average: 4.47
I’m not familiar with monotropism. I do have ADHD. Hmm.
posted by bunderful at 9:38 AM on June 3 [1 favorite]
Monotropism Score: 210 / 235
Your Average: 4.47
I’m not familiar with monotropism. I do have ADHD. Hmm.
posted by bunderful at 9:38 AM on June 3 [1 favorite]
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posted by Comstar at 6:04 AM on June 1 [3 favorites]