r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Jan 30 '25

Neuroscience A low-cost tool accurately distinguishes neurotypical children from children with autism just by watching them copy the dance moves of an on-screen avatar for a minute. It can even tell autism from ADHD, conditions that commonly overlap.

https://newatlas.com/adhd-autism/autism-motion-detection-diagnosis/
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u/ZoeBlade Jan 30 '25

Here, try some of these tests as a rough guide. You can also browse autistic subreddits and see if they seem more like your kind of people -- there tends to be a bit of communication friction between many autistic and non-autistic people, so if you get along with us better, that itself can be a clue. Similarly, if you already have autistic friends, that's probably a sign.

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u/Hendlton Jan 30 '25

Your score: 142 of 200 99% probability of being atypical (autistic/neurodiverse)

Aced it.

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u/SuccessfulPath7 Jan 30 '25

which one did you take?

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u/Hendlton Jan 31 '25

The Aspie Quiz. I figured that the one with the most questions would give the most accurate result. Probably not true, but I couldn't be bothered to do them all.

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u/perilousrob Jan 31 '25

Was that the 'Aspie Quiz' ? I scored 125/200 on that, with a 93% probability of being atypical.

I also tried the longer 50 question AQ quiz and scored 28.

A while back I read a thing on twitter - while it was still twitter - about the 'cough drop sign'. That really felt like me. I should probably try to get a referral to a psychologist or someone similar to get an actual diagnosis.

I didn't really think there might be anything more to it than that, but that Aspie quiz especially does have me going over a lot of things.

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u/AllanfromWales1 MA | Natural Sciences | Metallurgy & Materials Science Jan 30 '25

Took the AQ, scored 36/50 where the commentary says "79.3% of autistic people score 32 or higher (whereas only 2% of controls do), so scores of 32 and above are particularly significant."

Oh well.

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u/ZoeBlade Jan 30 '25

It sounds like your suspicions were probably well founded. If you're ready to look into it, it can explain a lot of the things you struggle with (some of which you might have erroneously assumed everyone else does as well), and there are certain accommodations you can ideally implement for yourself to make things a little easier. My DMs are open if you'd like to talk about it at all, autism's something of a special interest of mine.

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u/AllanfromWales1 MA | Natural Sciences | Metallurgy & Materials Science Jan 30 '25

To be honest I've made allowances for the possibility for some time, so it's hardly a shock to me. Given that I'll be retiring later this year, I'm not sure what benefits I could hope for.

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u/ZoeBlade Jan 30 '25 edited Jan 30 '25

Well, for one thing, it's likely each of your senses might be too strong or too weak. My partner's found that installing blackout curtains at home has really helped her, while we've both found noise-cancelling headphones to be invaluable. (I'm literally wearing mine right now in order to be able to concentrate properly.)

If you struggle to make eye contact, or decipher people's subtle hints, or people accuse you of being too direct, even arrogant, or mistake your tone of voice for being depressed or upset at them... then it helps to really understand and internalise that you're not a bad person, you're literally just talking with everyone at crossed purposes through no fault of your own.

Just letting yourself fidget (stim) without feeling ashamed, because your nervous sytem / unconscious literally needs to do that to avoid getting overstimulated, can be important.

My mother realised she was autistic after retiring, and it still helped her to advocate for herself, knowing she wasn't imagining all the little ways she struggles when most people don't. Just knowing that it's OK to politely make your excuses and leave a social gathering when it's starting to overwhelm you. Things like that all add up to a much less stressful life, requiring less recovery days.

Mostly, it's a relief to just go easy on yourself, after a lifetime of being too hard on yourself, thinking "Other people can do this, why can't I?" It's not that they're better at overcoming the struggle, it's that they're not struggling in the first place.

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u/AllanfromWales1 MA | Natural Sciences | Metallurgy & Materials Science Jan 30 '25

Ears: I just don't put in my hearing aids..

..then it helps to really understand and internalise that you're not a bad person..

You don't know me ;). Being serious, though, I gave up worrying about that a very long time ago. Without any diagnosis I just assumed I was different from them. My social circle is very small, and that's OK by me.

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u/ZoeBlade Jan 30 '25

Fair enough.

On an interesting side note, this is very anecdotal, but my mother's family is also from Wales, as is my partner's, which makes me kinda idly wonder if there's a larger proportion of autistic people in Wales...

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u/AllanfromWales1 MA | Natural Sciences | Metallurgy & Materials Science Jan 30 '25

..or other places with more sheep than humans.

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u/ZoeBlade Jan 30 '25

They're certainly easier to talk to!

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u/igloofu Jan 31 '25

On an interesting side note, this is very anecdotal, but my mother's family is also from Wales, as is my partner's, which makes me kinda idly wonder if there's a larger proportion of autistic people in Wales...

Um, interesting, that's all I'm gonna say about that.

And no, I'm gonna say more. My father, myself (mid '40s) and all 3 of my kids are ASD, all with different levels and symptoms. From everything I remember of my Grandfather, and from my dad has said, seems to be the case too. Both my Great Grandmother and Great Grandfather immigrated from Wales, and my Maternal grand mother did too. In fact, my surname is very very much Welsh, and based on a large and famous Welsh region.

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u/frostatypical Feb 03 '25

So-called “autism” tests, like AQ and RAADS and others have high rates of false positives, labeling you as autistic VERY easily. If anyone with a mental health problem, like depression or anxiety, takes the tests they score high even if they DON’T have autism.

"our results suggest that the AQ differentiates poorly between true cases of ASD, and individuals from the same clinical population who do not have ASD "

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4988267/

"a greater level of public awareness of ASD over the last 5–10 years may have led to people being more vigilant in ‘noticing’ ASD related difficulties. This may lead to a ‘confirmation bias’ when completing the questionnaire measures, and potentially explain why both the ASD and the non-ASD group’s mean scores met the cut-off points, "

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10803-022-05544-9

Regarding AQ and RAADS, from one published study. “The two key findings of the review are that, overall, there is very limited evidence to support the use of structured questionnaires (SQs: self-report or informant completed brief measures developed to screen for ASD) in the assessment and diagnosis of ASD in adults.”

Psychometric properties of questionnaires and diagnostic measures for autism spectrum disorders in adults: A systematic review

 

Regarding RAADS, from one published study. “In conclusion, used as a self-report measure pre-full diagnostic assessment, the RAADS-R lacks predictive validity and is not a suitable screening tool for adults awaiting autism assessments”

The Effectiveness of RAADS-R as a Screening Tool for Adult ASD Populations (hindawi.com)

RAADS scores equivalent between those with and without ASD diagnosis at an autism evaluation center:

Examining the Diagnostic Validity of Autism Measures Among Adults in an Outpatient Clinic Sample - PMC (nih.gov)

 

 

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u/AllanfromWales1 MA | Natural Sciences | Metallurgy & Materials Science Feb 03 '25

That sounds about right to me based on my experience and the nature of the tests, but I note that AQ specifically states that a score above 32 is only achieved by 2% of neurotypicals. Is that just advertising or out-of-date information?

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u/frostatypical Feb 03 '25 edited Feb 03 '25

Yes thats BS. The site linked above goes right back to the source 'embrace autism". Which is a diagnosis mill website run by a ‘naturopathic doctor’ with an online autism certificate who is repeatedly under ethical investigation and now being disciplined and monitored by two governing organizations (College of Naturopaths and College of Registered Psychotherapists). 

https://cono.alinityapp.com/Client/PublicDirectory/Registrant/03d44ec3-ed3b-eb11-82b6-000c292a94a8

The research Ive already linked had plenty of examples of people scoring high when they are not autistic. Its a pretty well known problem in professional circles. These tests shouldnt be labeled 'autism' at all because other things produce high scores.

Let's Be Clear That "Autism Spectrum Disorder Symptoms" Are Not Always Related to Autism Spectrum Disorder - PubMed (nih.gov)

Autism questionnaire scores do not only rise because of autism - PubMed (nih.gov)

Autism-spectrum quotient Japanese version measures mental health problems other than autistic traits - PubMed (nih.gov)

Have a look around at that linked site above. Says things like " if you think you're very likely to be autistic, then you're probably right." and "And if you think the questions on these tests are too ambiguous to answer... that's probably a sign."

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u/Tryingtoknowmore Jan 30 '25

What if you struggle completing the tests as they seem based too subjectively and on opinion rather than measurable data?

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u/fivefingerdiscourse Jan 30 '25

If this is your concern then you should get evaluated by a psychologist trained in assessing for ASD. They will have the ability to take into account both objective and subjective reports when making a diagnosis.

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u/Ugh_please_just_no Jan 30 '25

So many questions seem very ambiguous to me

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u/Frakshaw Jan 30 '25

The last line on the link:

And if you think the questions on these tests are too ambiguous to answer... that's probably a sign.

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u/ZoeBlade Jan 30 '25

This is a common criticism from autistic people taking the test. I don't know if non-autistic people have the same issue or not.

I've heard it claimed that the phrasing is ambiguous on purpose, as non-autistic people can thrive in ambiguity, so that itself is an indication... but I'm quite dubious that it was made badly on purpose, especially as that limits its usefulness to supervised use only.

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '25 edited Jan 31 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/ZoeBlade Jan 30 '25

I think it's trying to get at special interests. If there are any niche things where you spend a lot of your free time researching them, organising that information, maybe making a database, spreadsheet, or notebook of some kind to keep track of it all, maybe collecting and organising them, stuff like that, that all counts.

If you're really into birds to the point you spend a lot of time reading about them, and bore people with endless fun facts about them, I'm sure that would count.

Birdwatching, and ticking off the birds you've seen so far... that borders on being a stereotypical/canonical example, I think, along with trainspotting, stamp collecting, and coin collecting! But it can really happen with anything.

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u/PsyCurious007 Jan 31 '25

I spend a lot of time & energy researching my interests but I don’t catalogue anything possibly because I think I have ADHD wiring as well. I create systems & forget them. My organisational skills are very patchy at best. It’s so frustrating.

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u/ZoeBlade Jan 31 '25

Autism and ADHD co-occur often, so that's quite possible. I'm not sure what systems you create, but that sounds like the kind of thing someone might describe as cataloguing for the sake of simplicity, maybe?

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u/PsyCurious007 Jan 31 '25 edited Jan 31 '25

Organisational systems like filing information so I can it again later but I‘ll forget what principle I was adhering to so it becomes useless or I start grouping into collections but fail to maintain them & then I’m onto the next thing & there’s all these unfinished things. I have intense interests but I’m so scatter-brained, it drives me mad.

I have long-standing interests & short ones. Last night I got lost down an aviation rabbit hole. Today I can tell you what altitude planes over fly my house and something about how on board WiFi utilises air to ground signalling systems. All because I was annoyed that my WiFi keeps dropping out. Someone this morning showed surprise I seemed interested in aircraft & got talked at for rather longer than they wanted I suspect haha..

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u/ZoeBlade Feb 02 '25 edited Feb 02 '25

That sounds like probably AuDHD, autism combined with ADHD. So instead of a fastidiously catalogued knowledge of one obsession, you get a bunch of half-finished projects and notes in meticulous disarray.

...I start grouping into collections...

I think for the purposes of the test question, that counts.

So the longterm interests would be autistic special interests, and the shorter term ones AuDHD hyperfixations. Like, I've had a passion about making electronic music for decades, also computers and programming, writing, Aphex Twin's music, films and filmmaking, probably some others... but as well as those stalwarts, I've also had a string of serial interests that change every few months. The last one was chess (amassing a few sets and about a dozen books, and getting fairly decent at it), before that mechanical keyboards (surprisingly, I've found an off-the-shelf Keychron Q7-N3 to be my ideal combination, after verifying over a hundred other switches and various keycaps weren't preferable to me after all), Lego (to the point of borrowing my partner's calipers to infer their base units), typography, Casio digital watches, Android: Netrunner, C64 tapes, certain neurology, Newton (he was... something), and probably hundreds I've forgotten. (I seem especially susceptible to collecting sets of things, and writing articles about these subjects too.)

Like... part of this, on both the micro and macro level, seems to be that it's really hard to start to focus on something, and then, once you finally manage it, it's also really hard to stop focusing on it. (I say, rewriting this to perceived perfection, when I really need to go and cook lunch.)

The talking at people is called infodumping. What works for us is my partner and I basically take it in turns to infodump to each other.

Anyway, none of these are just you. If you look up these terms, you'll find your people. Amongst us, you're probably quite normal.

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u/dexmonic Jan 30 '25

Yes surprisingly that's a sign of autism. I had an autistic friend who said the same thing, so I asked for an example. I didn't even have to think about it, the question was cut and dry, but for him it was very difficult.

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u/borninthesummer Jan 30 '25

Yeah, I took the first test (I don't have autism) and the only one I could see as ambiguous is the big picture vs small details one.

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u/Nervous-Ad4744 Jan 30 '25

I had the same issue, I think what helped (without being sure) is considering how the test works and what its purpose is. The test can't be with you to observe if you notice noises others don't pay attention to or if you do things or think in ways that might indicate ASD. The next best thing is asking for your subjective opinion with the assumption that it's more or less in line with reality. And if you can't nail the correct answer for a few questions that's ok, hopefully the rest of the questions will average out to an accurate score.

But it doesn't have to be perfect because it's not a diagnosis. You can take the tests result and use it to get a professional to give you their educated opinion on whether or not you're autistic.

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u/No_Interest1616 Jan 30 '25

This is like when it asks you if you have trouble with xyz and you answer no because you already developed a system to deal with xyz and employ it in your daily life when NTs don't even notice xyz in the first place. 

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u/TinFoilHeadphones Jan 30 '25

That on itself sounds like pretty solid evidence.

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u/FloRidinLawn Jan 30 '25

Probably a different thing going on. That said, all “weird” is becoming lumped into autism. Good that it has more attention, but I think I see it becoming a thing. I lack the words for it. A gateway or excuse or overly easy applied label, it will diminish it? If too many claim to have it, it makes it harder for those who actually do, too

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u/ZoeBlade Jan 30 '25

That said, all “weird” is becoming lumped into autism.

The only thing that was lumped into autism was Asperger syndrome, and for very good reasons, that basically boil down to "Hans Asperger was employed by Nazis to separate the 'good' autistic people from the 'bad' (or, in some memorable instances, Jewish) autistic people, and Asperger's syndrome is just a phrase he made up for the former".

If too many claim to have it, it makes it harder for those who actually do, too

Not really. If you're talking about having a phrase to differentiate profoundly autistic people from mildly autistic people, then we already have that: levels three, two, and one.

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u/book_of_black_dreams Jan 31 '25

That’s actually a complete myth. Asperger Syndrome was coined and created by Lorna Wing, who used Asperger’s research to form some of her ideas about the autism spectrum. She noticed that more subtle forms of autism were not being recognized and wanted to create a diagnosis to raise awareness. Also, some would argue that the levels are too vague and serve really just as a severity scale than actual categories.

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u/ZoeBlade Jan 31 '25 edited Jan 31 '25

I stand corrected, thank you. So it was a phrase Lorna Wing made up to differentiate a subset of autistic people, and she named it after someone who, it turned out, was a Nazi whose job was to determine which autistic people were profoundly enough affected to be sent to concentration camps and which were mildly enough affected to be merely "rehabilitated to become useful to the German Volk".

So it sounds like she was helpfully pointing out that more-or-less level 1 autistic people also existed, and to a lesser extent are also struggling... and in hindsight, just picked a bad name? That sounds like a step in the right direction, name aside.

The levels are indeed still very vague. You could totally have a much more specific list of someone's particular traits and needs with something more akin to the astronomy code, bear code, and geek code. But such a thing would get very personal, and it would have to be up to the individual how much of that they'd be willing to divulge to any given person. It's also not something most people would recognise. Suffice it to say that autism has a very dynamic range of how profoundly it affects people.

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u/book_of_black_dreams Jan 31 '25

Yeah she didn’t know that Hans Asperger was a Nazi. Also, the issue is that “autism” as a very wide concept didn’t exist back then. They genuinely believed that these different phenotypes were actually different biological entities. And they might be right about that, we still don’t know if “autism” is a real unitary entity. There’s a certain level of arbitrariness when it comes to constructing diagnostic frameworks, because there are no real biomarkers for autism. I would recommend a great lecture on YouTube called “Rethinking Autism Diagnosis” by ASF.

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u/ZoeBlade Jan 31 '25

Thanks, I'll check that out! Yeah, I'm aware of how nebulous autism is, and so there's no objective, foolproof way of diagnosing it with certainty. It also seems to cluster with a lot of other stuff (ADHD, APD, synaesthesia, etc).

I gather autism is just the current term for what we believe is too many neural connections all over the place, which can have multiple causes, and complete opposite traits. There don't seem to yet be any neat distinctions or cutoff points you can make. Even though some traits are opposites, any combination's possible. So it's not like you could even differentiate senses-all-too-strong autism from senses-all-too-weak autism, as each individual case will be a unique combination of some senses being too strong and others being too weak and others in a comfortable middle ground.

That's why, just looking at the traits alone, you'd need a whole geek code type list of each person's individual combination of neural settings... and that's before you even try to get into the complexity of looking for the different causes for different people. I know enough to know there's no single autism gene, for instance, it's a complex interplay of probably many genes and many environmental factors (prenatal hormone levels, etc).

The whole thing's a big mess, but, y'know... that's nature!

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u/book_of_black_dreams Jan 31 '25

Yeah the science of autism is one of my special interests! It’s such an interesting topic with so many unknowns, and there’s so much to study. Childhood Disintegrative Disorder was merged into ASD in 2013, and then years later some studies came out showing it might not even be part of the autism spectrum at all. I imagine that our concept and knowledge of autism will be completely turned upside down 30 years from now.

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u/ZoeBlade Jan 31 '25

Yeah, I sensed we might have a bit of overlap in interests there! Huh, I didn't know about Childhood Disintegrative Disorder, that's interesting. I heard it used to be thought waaay back that autism was childhood schizophrenia. I'm hazy on how much they correlate, but I can see there's this whole overactive-brain cluster including those, OCD, etc.

I get really hazy on the science side of autism, though. I did start to do a reasonably deep dive on how the thalamus sends sensory input to the prefrontal cortex, which can tell the globus pallidus to make the thalamic reticular nucleus inhibit bits of the thalamus as required, which sounds like it doesn't work so well with many autists... The superior temporal sulcus sounded possibly like something that could cause face blindness and issues encoding and decoding pragmatics when it can't do its job properly... But I'm not at all confident in that, I think I inevitably got distracted into deep diving another topic before I got very far.

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u/book_of_black_dreams Jan 31 '25

This is what happens when people just repeat stuff without fact checking it. Hans Asperger was already dead when Asperger Syndrome was created. You can look up articles about Lorna Wing (she was a British Psychiatrist) she was also the person who invented the idea of an autism spectrum

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u/TheKnightsTippler 28d ago

I don't know about that, my brother has a severe learning disability and was diagnosed as autistic in the 90s, but hes very outgoing and social and I don't think he really fits into that category at all.

Sometimes I think autisms just used as a "there's something wrong with you, but we don't know exactly what" diagnosis.

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u/FloRidinLawn Jan 30 '25

I see a lot of people claiming to be or have it.

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u/ZoeBlade Jan 30 '25

I mean, it depends on who exactly you're talking about, but a lot of people (including older people who weren't diagnosed as children because they happened not to be stereotypical) have realised that these nagging issues they had could all be explained as traits of one single disability, which also explains a bunch of other issues they struggled with but assumed that was just part of the human condition that everyone has to deal with, when actually it wasn't. At least, that's pretty much how it was for me.

The amount of actually autistic people, now that doctors and scientists and everyone else are starting to realise that not everyone's stereotypical, is turning out to be a lot higher than previously imagined. This is the same as all other largely invisible minorities -- see, for instance, the classic chart of the number of openly lefthanded people going up as it ceased to be so demonised.

Maybe we just move in different social circles (inevitably, especially these days), but I see a lot of autistic people who struggled unnecessarily because they didn't get to have it as a label until very recently.

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u/CookieSquire Jan 30 '25

Do you have reason to believe they’re incorrect? If so, do you see harm caused by that misdiagnosis?

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u/FloRidinLawn Jan 30 '25

There is harm in a false self diagnosis. And it diminishing the actual experience for those with any neurodivergent difficulties. I dare say, this applies to any handicap.

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u/CookieSquire Jan 30 '25

If someone incorrectly diagnoses themselves with ASD, but then finds their life improved by coping strategies intended for autistic people, that’s a good thing. If they start spreading misinformation about autism, that’s a different issue, and certainly is harmful.

I’m still curious as to why you believe misdiagnosis is common enough to be a problem. It seems just as likely that the increase in reporting is just a reflection of greater public awareness of autism.

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u/FloRidinLawn Jan 30 '25

It is anecdotal and perception based experience, that was all. Offering a view point

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u/CookieSquire Jan 30 '25

Fair enough. Anecdotally, it does seem like more and more people are publicly labeling themselves autistic. I would love to see numbers on how often people who get professionally tested find out they were incorrect, and if that frequency has increased recently, but that data seems hard to come by.

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u/cookieroo Jan 30 '25

Thank you for sharing. I've suspected I might be on the spectrum, just very good at masking. The CAT-Q was useful.

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u/mekilat Jan 30 '25

Thank you . Great resource

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u/houseswappa Jan 30 '25

Welp, off the charts. Not literally but at the top haha

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u/ZoeBlade Jan 30 '25

You may want to check out some of the fine autistic subreddits and see if they seem like your kind of people... r/AutismInWomen, r/AutismTranslated, /r/AutisticAdults, etc.

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u/PsyCurious007 Jan 31 '25

I did the Aspie Quiz this morning funnily enough..97%. Some sections highly suggestive of ASD, one section highly suggestive of ADHD.

I‘ve only seriously begun considering if ASD might be in the mix relatively recently. Scored 35 on the AQ.

Took a look at the Raads. Nope. I simply can’t do it. It makes me feel nauseous. My memory of what I was like as a child or a teen isn’t clear enough.

I’m 62. Had my ADHD assessment not been pushed back, I’d have known the answer to that one 2 days ago. So frustrating.

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u/retrosenescent Feb 01 '25

I score very low on autistic tests (very allistic) yet have always preferred the company of autistic people because I find them straightforward, honest to a fault, and much more trustworthy and reliable than most people. That plus they tend to be much more likely to care about injustice and actually take action to do something about it, something I find most people are absolutely NOT willing to do. That plus they naturally question everything, especially things that don't make logical sense, like a lot of cultural traditions and cultural norms that I have always questioned and hated too.

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u/ZoeBlade Feb 02 '25

Huh, that's interesting! And sweet. You might be the first person I've heard of who feels that way. More seem to claim to like (maybe like the idea of?) things like honesty, integrity, and lateral thinking, but really just want someone who gets along with everyone even when they're doing abhorrent things. "Be a team player, don't rock the boat, etc."

Like how, conversely, a lot of us like the idea of friends and partners but don't have the time or energy to actually maintain many relationships...

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u/cbrworm Jan 30 '25

Great. Now I'm autistic.

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u/ZoeBlade Jan 30 '25

I'd recommend the various autistic subreddits if you'd like to know the particulars of what that means, plus my DMs are open if that helps. It can take some getting used to, but it's quite a journey of discovery for sure. "Wait, you mean most people don't struggle with that? All this time I just thought I wasn't trying hard enough..."