Does anyone have familiarity with the Gilliam or GARS autism assessment? Is this a useful instrument? Are there better ones?
Also, I kind of feel like if I am autistic, that could in some respect be a learning experience for me, but at the same time, if an instrument diagnoses ME as autistic, I think it might be a bullshit instrument because I'm pretty sure that while I am "abnormal", I'm not abnormal in the autism spectrum way. Maybe I'm wrong. It's all very strange. It would explain SO MUCH, but then, does it really even explain anything? Not really.
Let me update this with a few examples:
What does it mean to make a vocalization for self-stimulation? If a person babbles, hums, or talks to themselves, does this count as self-stimulation or is this just the mode of aesthetic living in a bland, soundless environment?
Likewise, what does it mean to use objects "inappropriately", like spinning cars, taking action toys apart? How is this inappropriate? Objects have many uses. Any imaginative person wants to take shit apart, right?
What does it mean to do things "ritually", much less "certain things"? How about ALL THINGS? What kind of rituals? Is this OCD or Autism? I'm lost.
Ritual and repetition and stereotyped behaviors come into this thing a half dozen times in section one and I have no idea what these things mean. Like, is this beating one's head against the wall or having compulsive behaviors that can be disrupted only with grave difficulty? Or does this mean you have nervous tics that are repeated in stressful situations, or at certain times or places, or... ??? This is like the problem of walking on the surface without attracting a Sandworm with your patterned, predictable movements. Aren't many of our movements non-random and repetitive? My Goodness.
Autism Spectrum et alia
Re: Autism Spectrum et alia
Aren't you too old for GARS? I didn't think it was intended for adults beyond school age.
Also for the assessment itself, you'd be better asking a professional who has been trained in its administration. I'm sure non-professionals can use it to see if someone might be on the spectrum, but you need a professional to make an actual diagnosis.
Having said all that... you're not autistic. OCD, autism, ADHD, anxiety and others can contain significant overlap in symptoms from what I understand.
Also for the assessment itself, you'd be better asking a professional who has been trained in its administration. I'm sure non-professionals can use it to see if someone might be on the spectrum, but you need a professional to make an actual diagnosis.
Having said all that... you're not autistic. OCD, autism, ADHD, anxiety and others can contain significant overlap in symptoms from what I understand.
Any time the solution is "banjo rifle", I'm in 100%.
Re: Autism Spectrum et alia
This is for my kid. One of my kids took the assessment and ended up exactly where I was before: lots of things that overlap or are very similar to these traits, but not enough to meet a threshold for diagnosis with autism spectrum. I think my doctor would give me some different assessment. But I tend to think my younger kid is very much like me and the older kid, and might pass the threshold on this assessment, but maybe that's because the assessment is kind of weird.
Re: Autism Spectrum et alia
The ongoing experience with this testing thing raises so many questions for me. We seem to be lumping a thousand different things under the umbrella of autism, when in fact there are clusters of similar properties here and there indicating that we're talking about several different things that might occur in unique combinations.
Whatever the situation may be, something about me and most of my family members is very strange. I already knew that but I'm really figuring out, it's very strange. Here is one example: there is a digit span test commonly administered to assess things like working memory or attention. People remember these digits in different ways. In theory it's supposed to involve specific areas of your brain, which could be functioning better or worse independently of other areas. So one person might do really well with a verbal task but not a numeric one, or there might be a difference between how well one can do forwards and backwards, and so forth.
I have no idea how I would do on such a test relative to other people, but what I discovered is my way of doing it is radically different and abnormal, because most people remember digits, but when someone tells me a sequence of numbers I get a string of colors instead, and if you asked me to relay the number back I would have to read the color backward off that image. I can sort of understand what other people are saying about how they do this, but I cannot imagine it. How does anybody remember a phone number? Nowadays when someone tells you their phone number it's 10 digits due to area code. How is anyone remembering all 10 of these digits if you don't have a color map of the number? Or even stranger is that people might not be remembering all 10 digits or something, but then how do you know anybody's phone number? Like do you have to write it down in subunits or don't you just take a color picture of the whole number so you can see it there? I don't know what the heck this is about.
The other aspect that interests me is, I finally have a concrete answer as to why I have such difficulty interacting with people on the internet or just in words, and I don't have that difficulty in person, but over a longer period of time interacting with another person it will happen as well. It boils down to this: in short-term face-to-face interactions apparently I'm able to act like a normal human being and put on happy expressions of pleasure and kindness or whatever it is that makes people comfortable with one another. But then over the long haul apparently I am non-responsive to other people's verbal engagement in a way that they find off-putting, and I have no concept how they respond to words I put on the page. Like if I think my words have no emotional valence or should be received in a certain way, in fact it turns out that they would be received in a totally different way or have a totally different valence to those reading them. Likewise once I'm comfortable enough around other people to just be myself, they think I'm not paying attention to them or not emotionally engaged with them when in fact I'm just thinking. I'm just sitting here thinking and it takes me a minute to figure out what you're saying relative to what I'm thinking. In short, I'm very successful at faking being a normal person in small doses. Totally unsuccessful at doing so in words or over a longer span of time. It's nice to be you know getting close to death and finally getting some answers that explain things. There's literally an entire sub area devoted to: "people who do not understand at all why other people do not like them", and apparently it's particularly hard for women or for people who have learned how to adapt to their social environment better, because most of the time they will be well liked and tolerated until someone gets to know them at a deeper level or no longer has the friendly politeness interactions as a shield.
TL;DR: I am finally getting some damn scientific answers as to why I have no friends and find it almost impossible to form the normal kinds of friendship with other women and will die alone and lonely but I guess maybe with dogs or kids or something so that will make up for it? I totally understand my dog emotionally; we are completely fine. One of my recent attempts to make a friend is another woman who is autistic and basically only understands how to get along with dogs, but she and I understand each other perfectly.
Whatever the situation may be, something about me and most of my family members is very strange. I already knew that but I'm really figuring out, it's very strange. Here is one example: there is a digit span test commonly administered to assess things like working memory or attention. People remember these digits in different ways. In theory it's supposed to involve specific areas of your brain, which could be functioning better or worse independently of other areas. So one person might do really well with a verbal task but not a numeric one, or there might be a difference between how well one can do forwards and backwards, and so forth.
I have no idea how I would do on such a test relative to other people, but what I discovered is my way of doing it is radically different and abnormal, because most people remember digits, but when someone tells me a sequence of numbers I get a string of colors instead, and if you asked me to relay the number back I would have to read the color backward off that image. I can sort of understand what other people are saying about how they do this, but I cannot imagine it. How does anybody remember a phone number? Nowadays when someone tells you their phone number it's 10 digits due to area code. How is anyone remembering all 10 of these digits if you don't have a color map of the number? Or even stranger is that people might not be remembering all 10 digits or something, but then how do you know anybody's phone number? Like do you have to write it down in subunits or don't you just take a color picture of the whole number so you can see it there? I don't know what the heck this is about.
The other aspect that interests me is, I finally have a concrete answer as to why I have such difficulty interacting with people on the internet or just in words, and I don't have that difficulty in person, but over a longer period of time interacting with another person it will happen as well. It boils down to this: in short-term face-to-face interactions apparently I'm able to act like a normal human being and put on happy expressions of pleasure and kindness or whatever it is that makes people comfortable with one another. But then over the long haul apparently I am non-responsive to other people's verbal engagement in a way that they find off-putting, and I have no concept how they respond to words I put on the page. Like if I think my words have no emotional valence or should be received in a certain way, in fact it turns out that they would be received in a totally different way or have a totally different valence to those reading them. Likewise once I'm comfortable enough around other people to just be myself, they think I'm not paying attention to them or not emotionally engaged with them when in fact I'm just thinking. I'm just sitting here thinking and it takes me a minute to figure out what you're saying relative to what I'm thinking. In short, I'm very successful at faking being a normal person in small doses. Totally unsuccessful at doing so in words or over a longer span of time. It's nice to be you know getting close to death and finally getting some answers that explain things. There's literally an entire sub area devoted to: "people who do not understand at all why other people do not like them", and apparently it's particularly hard for women or for people who have learned how to adapt to their social environment better, because most of the time they will be well liked and tolerated until someone gets to know them at a deeper level or no longer has the friendly politeness interactions as a shield.
TL;DR: I am finally getting some damn scientific answers as to why I have no friends and find it almost impossible to form the normal kinds of friendship with other women and will die alone and lonely but I guess maybe with dogs or kids or something so that will make up for it? I totally understand my dog emotionally; we are completely fine. One of my recent attempts to make a friend is another woman who is autistic and basically only understands how to get along with dogs, but she and I understand each other perfectly.
Re: Autism Spectrum et alia
Here's something that upsets me: part of the whole lashing out at transgender people we are seeing right now is this argument that if someone is autistic, there's an inherent problem diagnosing them with gender dysphoria. Apparently people with autism are more likely to experience gender dysphoria? Or vice versa? I haven't seen any source studies. But this is really bothersome, on top of the already horrible way state legislatures are going after families who don't conform to President Orban's gender categories. Some people would prefer that if you are autistic, You can't get access to any type medical treatment for being transgender even if you're an adult. What is the rationale?! Do they somehow think autistic people are less in touch with their own selves or not mentally capable of making such decisions? Or is it that they've decided people with autism are already weird and so they aren't allowed to have a second kind of weirdness, according to these judges? I honestly don't know what they're thinking.
The stuff going on in these state legislatures attacking trans people and especially the kids, it's all so horrid and depressing. They really need to leave these kids alone, my God. It's honestly to the level of perversion, the way they're going after this, and the irony is that these people think everyone else is the pervert. No, the rest of us really have no interest in harassing parents and prying into what's happening in their children's medical lives. It's only y'all who keenly wish to do this. The banning of the drag shows, too. It's kind of the definition of being perversely aroused by something like this, that you find it obscene. Being totally indifferent to it, I'm indifferent. So I can't understand how I would get all riled up about something like that unless... I was riled up about it? Physician heal thyself first. And then you've got ding dong down there trying to make child labor legal again. MAGA. Ugh.
The stuff going on in these state legislatures attacking trans people and especially the kids, it's all so horrid and depressing. They really need to leave these kids alone, my God. It's honestly to the level of perversion, the way they're going after this, and the irony is that these people think everyone else is the pervert. No, the rest of us really have no interest in harassing parents and prying into what's happening in their children's medical lives. It's only y'all who keenly wish to do this. The banning of the drag shows, too. It's kind of the definition of being perversely aroused by something like this, that you find it obscene. Being totally indifferent to it, I'm indifferent. So I can't understand how I would get all riled up about something like that unless... I was riled up about it? Physician heal thyself first. And then you've got ding dong down there trying to make child labor legal again. MAGA. Ugh.
Re: Autism Spectrum et alia
Update: yes! It appears one of the new arguments of the "gender critical" movement is that a whole class of diagnosed conditions should prohibit anyone under 18 from taking puberty blockers or hormones with the intent to gender transition. Autism and depression are two of the many. It's one of your core fears as a parent about having your child officially diagnosed with autism, that people will use this to justify treating your child as less deserving of autonomy or less capable of making good decisions or understanding the world. How sad.
The latest transgender whistleblower saga is really disgusting as well. This woman published a fairly widely redistributed article supposedly blowing the whistle on practices at a St Louis clinic, and then it turned out she had taken all kinds of private information about the kids including things they told their psychologists, and now a bunch of this stuff is being spread around on the internet as fodder for debates in the latest series of The Culture Wars. And one of the things she didn't like is apparently that autistic patients were able to access this treatment? So if you think that as a non-expert you should be able to second-guess the treatment of an autistic patient chosen by medical professionals who are qualified to do so along with the child and the parents, somehow that now justifies taking their private information and spreading it around the world? The claim is that since nobody's name is attached that makes it okay; that is not how these things work! What's the next thing people will decide your autistic child is not permitted to do and they need to expose it to the public? My God. We need to get the culture war about 400 mi further away from children than it is right now.
The latest transgender whistleblower saga is really disgusting as well. This woman published a fairly widely redistributed article supposedly blowing the whistle on practices at a St Louis clinic, and then it turned out she had taken all kinds of private information about the kids including things they told their psychologists, and now a bunch of this stuff is being spread around on the internet as fodder for debates in the latest series of The Culture Wars. And one of the things she didn't like is apparently that autistic patients were able to access this treatment? So if you think that as a non-expert you should be able to second-guess the treatment of an autistic patient chosen by medical professionals who are qualified to do so along with the child and the parents, somehow that now justifies taking their private information and spreading it around the world? The claim is that since nobody's name is attached that makes it okay; that is not how these things work! What's the next thing people will decide your autistic child is not permitted to do and they need to expose it to the public? My God. We need to get the culture war about 400 mi further away from children than it is right now.
Re: Autism Spectrum et alia
Finally came across the people who are studying the thing I have been wishing for a few years now someone would be studying:
https://news.weill.cornell.edu/news/202 ... rain-study
I guess they are using machine learning techniques to analyze a data set (which wasn't substantial enough before to do what they needed to do, but now is). This reveals four cluster areas of interest for different types of autism. So far they are distinguishing them according to levels of social impairment, repetitive behavior, and verbal facility. But one could imagine further investigation revealing different clusters or subtypes of interest.
The goal is pretty straightforward: much as uncovering cluster areas or subtypes in depression leads to more accurate and individualized treatments, so too might identifying subtypes of autism lead to more specifically targeted treatment plans.
It doesn't quite get to the point I would like, where we start being more careful about differentiating behaviors that require treatment from behaviors that are perfectly fine and might even be superior to the human standard. Psychologists seem to be too often stuck in the mode of "weird is pathological". But it's a good step in the right direction. I look forward to seeing what else they uncover.
https://news.weill.cornell.edu/news/202 ... rain-study
I guess they are using machine learning techniques to analyze a data set (which wasn't substantial enough before to do what they needed to do, but now is). This reveals four cluster areas of interest for different types of autism. So far they are distinguishing them according to levels of social impairment, repetitive behavior, and verbal facility. But one could imagine further investigation revealing different clusters or subtypes of interest.
The goal is pretty straightforward: much as uncovering cluster areas or subtypes in depression leads to more accurate and individualized treatments, so too might identifying subtypes of autism lead to more specifically targeted treatment plans.
It doesn't quite get to the point I would like, where we start being more careful about differentiating behaviors that require treatment from behaviors that are perfectly fine and might even be superior to the human standard. Psychologists seem to be too often stuck in the mode of "weird is pathological". But it's a good step in the right direction. I look forward to seeing what else they uncover.
Re: Autism Spectrum et alia
One of the recent developments - I'm sure it started years in the past but it has come into a fuller flower over the last year and legislative cycle - is this notion that autistic kids are slightly more likely to be trans or gay and yet shouldn't be allowed to pursue that expression because they're autistic. I don't really have words for this... I'm at a loss for words. One of the reasons I struggled with whether to allow my kid to be diagnosed is precisely that people treat autism like a disability even when it's not one. Sometimes autism might come with symptoms that create disabilities, yes, but it's not always like that. And when it comes to wise or ethical decision making, my autistic kid is about a thousand percent better than most of these legislators. Like we would be better off as a society if he was our decision maker, and he's not even old enough to be in such a role. Maybe people with certain kinds of autism should be the only ones trusted with the keys of authority, because they exercise much more rational judgment, and the rest of the idiots should shut up. That's kind of how I feel right now.