Quote from another thread "GD does correlate with autism "

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33. It's suspected that I have a mild form of ASD after it was brought up when I went to counselling. It makes a lot of sense to me after thinking back and friends and family agree.
 
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Only 40 phew i am much better than i thought.
Having two autistic children my family already knows who to blame we can see it running down my dads whole family but fairly mild.

Social situations hmm....Well this one time at a group for parents with autistic kids i did end up standing up telling them all to stop complaining about how hard things are and how they can no longer do anything socially that they should be grateful that their children are even alive, Wife was not overly happy with that but agreed that the other parents were very depressing.
 
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Which just goes to prove the adage that 'If you've met one Autistic person, you've met one Autistic person...'. Effective masking != diagnostic invalidity in a standardised test, rather it means you're (consciously or unconsciously) giving invalid answers to the questions. As you'll know, Autism sufferers have a lack of innate social intelligence and lack of the innate 'knowledge' of language and societal norms that neurotypical people have. Just because you've learned to hide it, doesn't mean you're cured or that you suddenly have innate knowledge, which is exactly what the diagnostic tests tend to focus in (in reality, in much more detail and breadth of scope than an online quiz :p).

dunno about you, but a test that purports to detect something, then fails to detect that thing is not a very good test in my book.

the problem is it's phrased at the end along the lines of "you scored above X you should maybe consult a doctor", almost as if it's designed to help adults who suspect they might be on the spectrum (but are old enough to have missed the more standard young age detection), hence why i'm calling it misleading.

for sure proper medical evaluation is going to be a hell of a lot more thorough, but then that's not really a revelation.
 
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14. Yet multiple people in my life have told me they thought I was autistic at first. One person particularly close to me said that at first they thought I was very social and normal. Then when they got to know me they "realised" I was actually autistic. Then when they knew me longer "your values are just so different to everyone else's you seem autistic". There's also an intelligence factor. I scored very highly on a formal IQ test once (top 0.5% range), I have an excellent memory and eye for detail and I work in the field of software design. People are simplistic and think in terms of stereotypes. If you're intelligent and precise, some people will think that means you're autistic. Some also interpret your low opinion of them and lack of interest in them, as introversion or social inhibition. When in fact they're just someone that probably shouldn't have been born. Not being nice isn't the same as not being unaware that someone is offended.

The test has indicators for autism on it, but those indicators are not solely indicators for autism. They can be (in extreme cases) indicators for abuse, indicators for narcissism, indicators for high intelligence. Maybe you remember birthdays because you're weirdly obsessed with numbers. Maybe because you have a good memory and feel you shouldn't have to depend on Facebook to remember important details about your friends. Maybe you struggle socially because you lack the wiring to read social cues, maybe because you were abused as a child; or maybe just because you find most people banal.

I wouldn't be surprised if some online tests could give good indication of whether you have the condition. You might find some autistic people are rather protective of their diagnosis after it became almost trendy to talk about mental health etc.. in the past few years.

Parents also. Secretly proud about their child being "special". Rather than just, you know, unpopular.

I've seen people with autism do standup comedy.

I recall one that used to perform with his eyes closed. Not sure if he was autistic or just very nervous. Funny, though. You can learn to work around low-level autism. You consciously work out the queues and at some point it starts to become instinctive. It's possible I am autistic despite my very low score just because I taught myself how to read people manually. Though that raises the question of does it then actually matter? So you get off to a slightly slower start socially than other children? So what? You can make it up later.

Re: your spellchecker question, the forum has one built in, I've just logged in using firefox and the word "pritty" above is underlined in red.

It's not built into the forum, but the browser. The browser recognises certain form elements (such as a text area) and performs spellchecking on it itself.

Yeah make software for a living :)

I've come to quite despise the IT / nerd / autistic stereotype. I've worked in the software industry on and off for nearly 20 years and obviously have met a few like that, but most people are just normal regular people. They care about details and doing things the right way, but that's just... normal? Programming is one of those fields that is somewhat open to people who lack social skills. It's still a hindrance - it's a hindrance anywhere. But you can be bad at social interaction and still understand how a database works. You can't be bad at social interaction and be a great salesperson. So we get a few people coming into the field because others are close to them. Same way you got a lot of female computer programmers back in the day because the fields of law and medicine were closed to women. But when they opened up and you could be a female doctor or barrister, the number of women in computer science fell. But I've never been convinced autism in computer science is an asset or intrinsic overlap. Smart people who are obsessive over numbers and patterns maybe they go into computer science. Dumb people who are these things - they're out there trainspotting and collecting bus numbers. The autistic savant stereotype that can perform amazing arithmetical stunts in their head? You can learn that too. Just get a book and learn the techniques and practice them.

At least this is my take on it all.
 
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dunno about you, but a test that purports to detect something, then fails to detect that thing is not a very good test in my book.

the problem is it's phrased at the end along the lines of "you scored above X you should maybe consult a doctor", almost as if it's designed to help adults who suspect they might be on the spectrum (but are old enough to have missed the more standard young age detection), hence why i'm calling it misleading.

for sure proper medical evaluation is going to be a hell of a lot more thorough, but then that's not really a revelation.

Ah yeah, that makes sense. Apologies, but the way you worded your original post came across like you had a diagnosis (?) but because you'd learned to mask and subsequently 'fooled' the test, it made it nonsensical.
 
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Because it's in the thread title and because it span off from my comments in another thread:

There is around a 40% correlation in GD diagnoses to autism. That's not 40% of autistic people are GD, but that 40% of GD children are also diagnosed as autistic. This is a very similar ratio as with anorexia to autism, suggesting that the mechanism is the same. And that mechanism is likely (imo) to be that people who struggle to fit in socially and are semi-blind to how others perceive them, are vulnerable to body image disorders. Imagine you're a teenage girl (already statistically more susceptible to peer pressure and worrying about appearance) and you don't really feel like you fit in. You don't understand people's jokes or interaction with you, you feel socially clumsy and are aware that on some level you just don't "get it". And then someone comes along and tells you there's a reason you don't fit in with the other girls (or boys). It's because you're trans. And not only does this suddenly absolve you of any self-doubt or blame on the situation, it's something that is actually celebrated by your school and there's a social group ready made for you to belong to. Throw on top of that the amount of attention you are suddenly getting from males around you (your age and adults) that you're not really ready for. Frankly, a correlation is hardly surprising given the encouragement some groups are making to get children to "come out" as trans.

(BTW, I know boys can and do feel the above as well. The rates are just much higher with adolescent girls).
 
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Got 11 but I'm aware that I have some what might be considered "tendancies" from Aspergers and Autism rather than a full blown case of either (restrictive/repetitive interest or behaviour from Aspergers & fantastic visual/rote memory from Autism), but I'm also well aware that these things alone don't confirm anything.
 
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Ah yeah, that makes sense. Apologies, but the way you worded your original post came across like you had a diagnosis (?) but because you'd learned to mask and subsequently 'fooled' the test, it made it nonsensical.

i do, and i have, and yes your premise that i've fooled the test is probably correct. it's just that learning to mask the symptoms (for the lack of a better term) is something that most folk on the lighter ends of the spectrum will do naturally. problem is that means this particular online test is misleading for folk who think they might have a mild form of autism but have learned around and therefore "pass" the test when a more thorough examination would yeild a different conclusion.
 
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