Same here. I have a near-perfect memory for things that interest me and a goldfish memory for things that don’t.
During my studies, bioethics, history and neuroscience were an absolute doddle. Top of the class without even trying.
Statistics, OTOH, required a monumental struggle just in order to scrape a narrow pass. And I forgot all of it five seconds after the exam.
I dunno what it means, but this is what I got.
Draw a vertical line down the center of the graph, and if most of the area encircled by the black lines are on the left, you lean more neurotypical, opposite goes for the right side. So you’re a bit more neurodiverse than NT.
It used to be that way, but I’ve been on stimulants for so long that pretty much everything that I read or listen to sticks. Not exactly eidetic memory, but if I’ve read it, then taken notes on it, that data is in my brain is not going anywhere.
…but keep in mind that they’re called Autism Spectrum Disorders for a reason. Nobody is 100% one way or the other, and there is no sharp dividing line between Aspie and not-Aspie.
Geeky folks tend to be a bit closer to the Aspie side than average, and heavily-Aspie folks tend to have parents that are a bit geeky. “Normals” on the left, geeks in the middle, Aspie’s on the right, Autists [1] on the extreme right.
[1] Using the terminology colloquially here. In current official psych-speak, there is no Aspie/Autist distinction. It’s all just ASDs of varying severity.
As we’re playing this game, here’s mine.
Your neurodiverse (Aspie) score: 131 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 67 of 200
You are very likely neurodiverse (Aspie)
But I’m fucked-up in different ways to the ones this quiz is trying to diagnose. And it’s not a very good quiz, some of the questions should have been essay answers, or a greater spread of numbers or at very least “depends on the situation”. Or something. I dunno, it is what it is, make of that it you will.
Plus, this online quiz is far from definitive.
Here’s mine
I never thought I was autistic or had Aspberger’s or anything … I am finding that the older I get the less I can tolerate crowds (especially if they aren’t all doing the same thing – like baseball stadiums are ok, times square not so much) and the more time I want to be doing something solitary. I’m also finding it harder and harder to be interested in social situations that require me to make lots of small talk – it tires me out rather quickly.
Yup.
OTOH, neither are the offline diagnostics. It’s part of the nature of psychometric testing; they’re inevitably probabilistic rather than definitive.
For anyone interested in the rationale behind this test’s construction, see http://sgo.sagepub.com/content/3/3/2158244013497722.full
Could be early-onset curmudgeonliness perhaps? It’s usually pretty benign, but keep an eye out in case you start forming attachments to lawns.
Is anyone else finding it really fascinating to compare shapes of charts to see whose matches our own? Cool stuff.
In this episode of the Aspiecast Podcast, I describe an aspect of my social interaction that I didn’t consider until someone told me, which is that I can go from zero to 100 percent social familiarity immediately, when it comes to talking to someone I’ve not met before.
So much this. This is something my son and I both do. We have a lot of couchsurfers over all the time, but I’ll often either ignore them or get into deep conversations with them within a few minutes of meeting them. A surprising amount of people are cool with that, and it makes them feel welcome to be accepted into the family life immediately. The truth is that I’m glad they’re here, but I suppose I see people as pretty fungible and I may just carry on the same conversation with someone else later. This Sunday I had a deep conversation with some couchsurfers that I’d never met before, then later ignored our close friends for the first half an hour when they came to visit, because I’d had enough people for a while (they did understand and the rest of the family spent time with them). It’s the same with recognising emotions in others. Just go in blind and project the emotion that you want them to have. Hosting people is much easier than visiting people, as I find it very helpful to have a place to retreat if I need to.
One of the questions that a few tests have asked is whether other people find you odd. I didn’t think they did until a few months ago when I asked people for feedback. My brother and closest friend growing up said that I was a little like a spaceman and he couldn’t read me like he could with other people, although it was clear that I was thinking a lot. My parents didn’t really understand me either, although we were a very close family. My wife recently told me that when we were first dating, we watched “A Beautiful Mind” together. She didn’t tell me then, but she was thinking that if John Nash’s wife could love him, she could love me (apparently I’m not as odd as John Nash though - she’s so sweet). My neighbour said that it was fairly obvious - I wouldn’t necessarily notice her for a few seconds if we met and I wouldn’t make the right facial expressions when we talked. All of these people accept me and care about me, I just had no idea they thought that way about me.
Some examples of black and white thinking - we were planning to visit my sister-in-law and her family in Belgium for the weekend. I had some work that I needed to do on my computer, and I was planning to do it on the way. Unfortunately, my computer didn’t charge overnight and my battery was almost dead (although it would still work while plugged in). Nope, I’m not going anymore. Everyone else can go, but my weekend plans have been cancelled. It doesn’t matter that we rented a car, my family is already in the car, my SIL’s family is waiting for us and I can probably make time when we get there, at that moment I can only see that my idea of what we were going to do has changed and there’s no way I can bring it back. I did end up going and I did get my work done, but part of this came from recognising patterns in my behaviour and way of thinking and choosing to trust another person that it would be OK.
I’ve been on a lower dosage recently, and I have no concentration at all. A couple of months ago I’d have finished a certain project within a day (maybe a little longer), but this one took me five days and I was up until 2 am last night.
In this episode of the Aspiecast Podcast, I describe an aspect of my social interaction that I didn’t consider until someone told me, which is that I can go from zero to 100 percent social familiarity immediately, when it comes to talking to someone I’ve not met before.
So much this. This is something my son and I both do. We have a lot of couchsurfers over all the time, but I’ll often either ignore them or get into deep conversations with them within a few minutes of meeting them. A surprising amount of people are cool with that, and it makes them feel welcome to be accepted into the family life immediately. The truth is that I’m glad they’re here, but I suppose I see people as pretty fungible and I may just carry on the same conversation with someone else later. This Sunday I had a deep conversation with some couchsurfers that I’d never met before, then later ignored our close friends for the first half an hour when they came to visit, because I’d had enough people for a while (they did understand and the rest of the family spent time with them). It’s the same with recognising emotions in others. Just go in blind and project the emotion that you want them to have. Hosting people is much easier than visiting people, as I find it very helpful to have a place to retreat if I need to.
One of the questions that a few tests have asked is whether other people find you odd. I didn’t think they did until a few months ago when I asked people for feedback. My brother and closest friend growing up said that I was a little like a spaceman and he couldn’t read me like he could with other people, although it was clear that I was thinking a lot. My parents didn’t really understand me either, although we were a very close family. My wife recently told me that when we were first dating, we watched “A Beautiful Mind” together. She didn’t tell me then, but she was thinking that if John Nash’s wife could love him, she could love me (apparently I’m not as odd as John Nash though - she’s so sweet). My neighbour said that it was fairly obvious - I wouldn’t necessarily notice her for a few seconds if we met and I wouldn’t make the right facial expressions when we talked. All of these people accept me and care about me, I just had no idea they thought that way about me.
Some examples of black and white thinking - we were planning to visit my sister-in-law and her family in Belgium for the weekend. I had some work that I needed to do on my computer, and I was planning to do it on the way. Unfortunately, my computer didn’t charge overnight and my battery was almost dead (although it would still work while plugged in). Nope, I’m not going anymore. Everyone else can go, but my weekend plans have been cancelled. It doesn’t matter that we rented a car, my family is already in the car, my SIL’s family is waiting for us and I can probably make time when we get there, at that moment I can only see that my idea of what we were going to do has changed and there’s no way I can bring it back. I did end up going and I did get my work done, but part of this came from recognising patterns in my behaviour and way of thinking and choosing to trust another person that it would be OK.
I’ve been on a lower dosage recently, and I have no concentration at all. A couple of months ago I’d have finished a certain project within a day (maybe a little longer), but this one took me five days and I was up until 2 am last night trying to finish it.
Maybe it’s sad or makes me pathetic, but I can’t be a functional adult without my drugs. I’ve transitioned from traditional stimulants to a eugeroic drug that does everything the stimulants did, but with fewer side-effects (some of which I like and sorely miss still). If I miss a day, I end up like a lost toddler. My brain doesn’t work without the drugs anymore. It can be terrifying, after the fact, when I’ve taken the next day’s drugs and realize that I did exactly every single thing that popped into my head, without consideration of any kind, and easily could have gotten myself tossed in jail, or killed, or lost my job, or quit, or lost my housing. Lots of things.
My brain likes to either be content or anxious, and without the right amount of the right kind of drugs, I’m very bad off in either direction. Content and free to wander, or anxious and worrying and getting migraines and pulling my hair out.
Usually, autism is combined with some kind of delayed cognitive development, and those, who have autism but are still within the normal IQ range, are classified as Aspergers or high-functioning autists. As it often happens with IQ studies, there is a kind of triangular correlation - https://spectrumnews.org/news/autism-features-may-vary-with-intelligence/ - or reverse Anna Karenina effect, many low-IQ children have similar problems, whether autistic or not, but high-IQ autists have special educational needs, and can be very productive if those needs are addressed.
Obviously, there could be a lot of misunderstanding from neurotypical population, particularly if Asp individual requires a lot of attention while not being very productive. Then attitude is more like “lock him up”, “take something”, and drugs like SSRIs are often recommended to deal with autism, including duloxetine - https://rxed.eu/en/c/Cymbalta/ But as far as I have seen in a psychiatric facility, those drugs are often used to treat external behaviors that result from conflicts, being annoyed and misundertood. When a reason for conflict is removed, the need for additional medication often disappers.
Shoot, mid 40s might be right on time I suppose.
And how! I don’t take any stimulants any more, as I’ve been moderately successful getting around this problem by giving all the boring tasks to someone else, especially those who fear having them in my hands in the first place.
I hate this thing of referring to a fairly specific set of characteristics by an inappropriately generic name.
I have been assured by surgeons, neurologists and my family physician that I have atypical neurology. Thus, I am not accurately described as “neurotypical” (the type specimen of H. Sapiens is Karl Linnaeus (Stearn, 1959) but nobody’s digging him up at this point to investigate his neurology). Nonetheless, I am not conventionally autistic, because having atypical neurology is not the same thing as being autistic, and it seems to me that “neurodiverse” is an exceptionally useless way to describe people on the autism spectrum.
OK, pet peeve. But I had to let it out!
This works in some contexts, but not others. Specifically, it really won’t work in a marriage. On the other hand, I wouldn’t mind a secretary sometimes. One shameless example recently: My MIL has been really on edge and controlling recently as she had a hip replacement on Monday and was worried about it. She was extra critical and seemed to want to run everyone’s life for them, so I got her to do my taxes. All that nervous energy went into pushing through the German bureaucracy and we all felt better. (She is similarly low on empathy and had a reputation for “walking over dead bodies” (über Leiche gehen) to pursue a goal when she was younger). I don’t usually find an elegant solution though and it’s important for me to make sure I’m not passing on responsibilities to everyone else.
It’s been a few years since I had the conversation, but I was told by someone running a workshop on neurodiversity that it is meant to be an umbrella term for autistic spectrum conditions, ADD and the various dys* conditions (there may have been others but I can’t remember them now). The reasoning behind this is they are often comorbid.
The person running that workshop had asperger’s and dyspraxia, both diagnosed by professionals, if anyone feels it’s relevant.
This 2004 New York Times article argues that it’s a political term.
which isn’t to say that it isn’t valid-- it’s just that trying to find a clinical rationale for something that is rooted in anti-clinical protest is a fools errand.
