The context for those 2 sentences was changing colour to match your environment.

That is such bullshit, even aside the ableism angle. Whatever impairments you might have, you already had them when you passed the first time. How are they gonna test you differently? Write all the roadsigns as vague hints? Upholster the car with uncomfortable fabrics?

It also had by far the most responses total. Whether that’s because it’s the most relatable, because it was first, or because it’s the one most directly rooted in the physical world, I don’t know.

Here’s the test I was thinking of https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc0eFJV5wJzJAw2R9ii2ts_cfTZ8mGKcsdWnehz-XATOSFs3w/viewform

And turns out it’s 50 questions, so I don’t think it would be ideal for the question-a-day format. If you’re interested in a similar sort of ‘let’s try to answer these questions together’ exercise, youtuber I’m Autistic Now What does that in this video

Yeah, I think doing the longer, standardized tests would mostly just be going over the same points again in slightly different wording. And the drop in responses over time suggests that one question per day might be a bit too much.

There’s a couple of tests that cover slightly different ground. There’s one about masking that I think is not too long. Also one about monotropic attention, and I think one about demand avoidance. I’m going to think about it and leave some breathing room before jumping in with another.

One weird trick…

For those ‘people often say…’ questions, there’s huge cultural variations in how acceptable it is to even talk about one’s personal traits. ‘people say I am very blunt’ - sorry I don’t know anyone blunt enough to say that.

In your case, I think you’d answer Agree for this question. It’s not up to you to tease out if it’s the result of condition X or condition Y. And your health provider shouldn’t be making that determination based purely on which option you picked on a self-report questionnaire.

We already had a question about reading subtext, so I guess this one is more about the underlying motivations.

Anyway in the for column, there’s been times when I’ve been scammed or taken advantage of. And I’ve had some “[years later]… Ohhh! She was flirting with me” moments.

In against, I think I’m not bad at spotting when someone is masking distress or discomfort (tho I don’t always know what to do with that information). And out of meatspace, with time to process, I’m much better at spotting bad actors.

Going for Slightly Agree

Or when. They said it was in their history - they could have been 30 years sober for all we know.

It’s funny, both you and @[email protected] were careful to avoid over-literal interpretations (unlike me haha), but still you came to quite different understandings. You - “yes, I have a broad interest in learning”. Pancake - “yes, I am systematic with information”

Okay, if I was going to learn about fish, it might go something like “I mentioned to someone about how spawning salmon return to their place of birth. But is that actually true?” *Learns about salmon life-cycle. *Learns about biological study of animal migration. *Learns about migration in different animals. *Learns about how understanding has developed over time. *Learns how it influenced ideas on geoscience, commerce, anthropology

It’s like I’m on a random walk through the tree of knowledge, rather than cataloguing a few select branches.

I do like how the class of lobe-finned fish can be interpreted to include human beings. That just tickles me.

Once again, it depends what they mean. What do they mean by ‘collect information’ and what do they mean by ‘categories of things’. Because I like learning about things, I like going on research dives and learning odd bits of information. But I don’t think I approach it in such a systematic way that this question suggests.

I checked against an extended version of the same test (AQ-50), and this question had some added clarification;

(e.g. types of car, types of bird, types of train, types of plant, etc.).

I could be interested in learning about any of those, but it would not be motivated by its belonging to the category. It would be if the particular car, bird, etc had some inherent interest, or was relevant to something else I was involved with

I think I Slightly Disagree

So, I don’t know if you’re criticising me, or just making an observation (either is fine). But here’s my reasoning for starting these posts, copied from the first post in the series.

I thought it could be fun/interesting to go through an autism test question by question, and see what resonates with people, and how we approach thinking about the questions.

I chose this particular test because it’s a shortened version of one I was set by my own health provider, and at only ten questions it won’t outstay it’s welcome. And I chose to link to that particular website because they also include a discussion of the test’s strengths and weaknesses, and also I didn’t see them promoting any outdated ideas about autism (tho I didn’t check thoroughly). If you want to suggest any alternates, I’d be open to hear.

And if these posts really bother you, we’re on question 8 of 10 so it’s nearly done. I’ll take any feedback on board before I do another.

You’re right, it does a bit. I should have worked out referral codes or something 😆

Not very quickly, no. If the task needed working memory (keeping count or something), that will be gone. I’ll need to take a moment to reassess what I was doing and where I’m up to. If there were X,Y,Z subtasks, I’ll need to check which ones are done and which not. A long enough interruption and I might forget entirely and not return to the task at all. If someone interrupts me by trying to help, and I don’t immediately understand what they’re trying to do, I find that very irritating.

Disagree. I’m leaning towards Definitely Disagree but it’s not a definite definitely haha.

And also

I don’t even work that hard

Trump would never compare himself unfavourably to anything, even in jest.

I had that thought too. But I remember reading about cave paintings where prehistoric people had painted their hands, and the distribution of lefts and rights was consistent with there being the same proportion of lefties as in modern times. And I doubt the social pressures around handedness go back that far.

Ohoh my own updated response is very dismissive of those emotional intelligence tests, and the notion that normal people can read your mind through your face. I very much enjoyed Ponderful’s (very long) video on the subject, and you might too.

I prefer to parse it as a series of exclamations. China! Ferrari! Sex! Orgy! Death! Crash!

Haha. I have opinions on this one. I think I’ll wait a bit before discussing it so as not to bias anyone else’s response.

(Later)

Look at all those emotions! Can you name them all? These pictures are used in emotional intelligence tests where they’ll ask you to do exactly that - name them all.

What they won’t ask you is, how is the photoshoot going for this guy? Is it his normal line of work and how does this particular job compare to a regular day? Are any of the faces difficult for him to make? Is he trying to method act them, does he have some rehearsed, does he have his own reference pictures to look at? Does he have a rapport with the photographer? Is the lighting bothering him? Is he tired? Does the shoot have catering? What’s he planning on doing later?

They don’t ask any of that because, obviously, you can’t tell what someone is thinking or feeling just by looking at their face.

Now, if you could see the context, if you knew something about the guy, could see how he was acting and what he was saying, then you could make a guess at some of this information. Maybe even a good guess. But just from the face alone? No chance!

Here is what emotional intelligence practitioners don’t want you to know about faces;

Facial expressions are live action emoji, that you act out with your face to communicate the idea of an emotion. They are not windows into the soul.

This question is garbage. Definitely Disagree