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/derpmuffin Jan 30 '25

Interesting. So it's better at detecting AuDHD?

I was diagnosed with pdd-nos as a kid when that was a thing and in college got diagnosed with ADHD.

Kinda makes me wonder if pdd-nos was actually a category for us AuDtist by accident. In my case, it was like "hnmmm he's definitely not not autistic, but he's not like autistic autistic. Put him in the ain't normal category.

I would love to dance in front of a robot and have it tell me I'm a sauced up white boy. But if it tells me I dance like a NT I will no longer have an excuse for my horrific just dance performance. And I'm not sure I'll recover from that.

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u/legomolin Jan 30 '25

Don't get stuck on different specific diagnoses, the spectrum can be understood as going all the way from fully NT to severe autistic, and evaluations have a big margin of error since it's all quite rough estimations (no matter of its tests or interviews) on where you fall on different scales.

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u/glasshouse5128 Jan 30 '25 edited Jan 30 '25

Doesn't include fully NT. Edited to add https://neuroclastic.com/its-a-spectrum-doesnt-mean-what-you-think/ It really helps to explain what the spectrum means.

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u/insertcoolnamehere_7 Jan 30 '25

That’s a great article! I’ve never seen the spectrum described so well.

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u/i_post_gibberish Jan 30 '25

Great article, thanks.

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u/legomolin Jan 30 '25

Yeah, but that is like two separate dimensions. Autistic traits are also spread according to a normal statistical distribution in the general population (from "more to less"), so both ways to visualize a spectrum are correct depending on what you want to discuss/communicate, even if the one in the article is what is typically meant.

A person can for example absolutely have some very real traits that effects his/her daily life, like trouble with sensory inputs, to tolerate sudden changes, have trouble understanding non verbal communication or emotions, while still in a correctly done evaluation not be "autistic enough" to meet criterias for a formal diagnosis. Then I think it's valid to describe it as having autistic traits.

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u/glasshouse5128 Jan 30 '25

That's basically what the article says, one or two autistic traits does not equal autism, to be diagnosed you have to be affected in most or all areas to some degree. But they also point out that not everyone is 'a little autistic'. Not saying that's what you said, but I've heard many people say that when they make a social blunder or something like that. Anyway, I think we're saying the same thing but from two different perspectives.

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u/legomolin Jan 30 '25

Yeah, then we seem to agree with each other. :)