Tag Archives: take a test Tuesday

Asperger's Tests

Taking the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale Test

166 Comments

The Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale Test is a measure of the degree of social phobia that a person experiences. Autistic individuals often have a social anxiety disorder diagnosis so I thought it would be interesting to see how we score on this test.

Before taking the test, I think it’s important to differentiate between autistic social anxiety and social phobia. Social phobia, the set of experiences on which a social anxiety disorder is based, is a strong fear of being judged by others and of being embarrassed. Generally the fear has to interfere with a person’s ability to work, attend school or generally function on a daily basis for it to rise to the level of a phobia.

A key feature of social anxiety disorder is that the anxiety experienced is irrational. For example, a person might become very anxious about going to work because they’re afraid that their boss will reprimand them in front of others even though they’re generally good at their job and their boss usually gives criticism to employees in private. In addition to the emotions associated with anxiety (fear, nervousness, dread), the person experiences strong physical sensations, like nausea, racing heart rate, sweating, and/or shortness of breath, in anticipation of the feared situation.

For a long time, I thought that I experienced social anxiety. Until I started reading about the experiences of others and discovered that my issues with social interaction are atypical for nonautistic people, but also atypical for those with social phobia.

Here’s how my social, um, issues manifest:

  • Realize that a social event is coming up in a few days.
  • Develop a background sense of dread.
  • Become increasingly irritable, withdrawn, restless and avoidant.
  • Resolve to go anyhow.
  • Get ready for the event way too early then sit around in my fancy clothes waiting for the precisely calculated minute at which I need to leave the house so as not to arrive too early or too late.
  • Forget five minutes after I arrive how much I dreaded the event or even why.
  • Stumble through the event with my usual atypical mix of being socially awkward, overly informative and very interested in anything on the periphery of the event.
  • Leave at the earliest opportunity.

I guess what I have is more social dread than social phobia. Which makes me curious how I’ll score on this test.

(This is not to say that no autistic people experience social phobia or that I don’t have specific fears around certain social situations, just that I don’t experience the more broadly defined social anxiety like I’d always assumed.)

Taking the Test

An online version of the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale Test is available here.

There are 24 situations presented, which are rated in two categories: fear and avoidance. You’re asked to rate each situation based on your experiences in the past week and to imagine how you’d react to the situation if it is one that you don’t usually experience.

For fear, the choices are: none, mild, moderate and severe. For avoidance, they are: never, occasionally, often and usually. If you don’t choose an option, it will default to none or never, so be sure you’ve made a choice for each to get an accurate score.

The test will take 3 – 10 minutes to complete, depending on how much you need to think about each answer.

Scoring the Test

You’ll receive a two part score, with one score for fear and one for avoidance, as well as an overall rating of your level of social anxiety.

My score was: 23(fear) + 17(avoidance) = 40

You do not suffer from social anxiety.

(For reference, a total score of 55 is the cutoff for social phobia.)

I found the two factor set-up of the test really helpful because it allowed me to say that I avoid something but not out of fear or that I fear something but generally do it anyhow. For example, I rated “fear of speaking in front of others” as severe but only avoid it occasionally. Returning an item is something that I don’t like doing, but I’ve never avoided taking something back for refund because the incentive of getting my money back for an item that I don’t need is pretty high. Public speaking is something that I’ll do when I have to, but it makes me incredibly nervous. On the other hand, “giving a party” got both “severe” on fear and “often” on avoidance.

Things like “resisting a high pressure” salesperson fall into “often” on avoidance but “mild” on fear. It’s one of those situations that I avoid because I just find them annoying (being observed when working) or a waste of time (small group activities, ack!), not because I fear them.

Thinking about each activity in terms of “how much do I dislike/fear this thing?” and “how does that feeling impact my daily functioning?” was helpful in identifying areas that I should probably work on (high fear/high avoidance items).

One potential problem for those of us on the spectrum, however, is that our social fears may not be irrational. For example, we might fear making phone calls to strangers because of difficulties with language pragmatics that make it hard to conduct phone conversations successfully. So even if our fears don’t fit the irrational aspect of social phobia, we could end up with a high social anxiety score. I think that in a clinical setting, if a therapist is using this scale with an autistic person as a screening instrument, items with high fear/avoidance scores should be interrogated more thoroughly for the underlying reasons to avoid misdiagnosis.

The Bottom Line

The situations presented cover a broad range of social situations in a way that makes it possible to separately identify feelings of anxiety and how much those feelings affect your actions, making it a practical way to identify general levels of social anxiety and specific anxiety-inducing situations.

 

Asperger's Tests

Taking the RAADS-14

59 Comments

The RAADS-14 is a shortened version of the 80-question RAADS-R autism screening test. The 14-question RAADS-14 is intended to be a quick screening tool for clinicians, much like the AQ-10.

Unlike the AQ-10, however, the RAADS-14 is positioned by its creators for use in outpatient psychiatric screening. The validation study for the RAADS-14 was conducted on people who had a pre-existing diagnosis of autism, ADHD, anxiety disorder, psychotic disorder, borderline personality disorder, or mood disorder.

The goal of the study appears to be positioning the RAADS-14 as a front line tool for differentiating between autism and other psychiatric diagnoses whose traits might make an autism diagnosis in adults more difficult.

As with other shortened versions of screening instruments, the creators attempted to choose questions representative of the lengthier test. A pilot version was created by Swedish researchers using 18 questions distributed proportionately across the 4 domains of the RAADS-R (language, social relatedness, sensory-motor and circumscribed interests). After testing, four questions were dropped because they failed to accurately discriminate between autism and other psychiatric diagnoses.

The resulting 14 questions are organized into 3 domains: mentalizing deficits, sensory reactivity, and social anxiety. You can see which questions belong to which domain here. Honestly, the way these categories are named feels like a step backwards. The domains for the RAADS-R have fairly generic names while these new domains feel judgmental in a negative way.  Continue reading Taking the RAADS-14 →

Asperger's Tests

Taking the Aspie Quiz (Version 3)

161 Comments

The Aspie Quiz was recently updated to Final Version 3, which is a major update, so I thought it would be a good idea to retake it. Much of what’s changed is behind the scenes refinement of the test items and won’t be evident to the average test taker. If you’re new to the Aspie Quiz, you might want to read my original write up for more background. This post will focus primarily on what’s new.

If you’ve taken the Aspie Quiz before, you’ll likely notice that there are some new questions and that the wording of the test result has changed. Previously, test takers received Neurotypical and Aspie scores; currently the scores are presented as Neurotypical and Neurodiverse, with an outcome of “likely neurotypical”, “likely neurodiverse” or a mix of the two.

In the context of the test, the term neurodiverse includes autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia, and dyspraxia (and perhaps OCD and Tourettes). However, the test still appears to be primarily a test for autistic traits. This is reflected in the statement that:

The goal of this test is to check for neurodiverse / neurotypical traits in adults. The neurodiversity classification can be used to give a reliable indication of autism spectrum traits prior to eventual diagnosis.

If you want to read more in detail about the development of the Aspie Quiz and what has changed over time, Leif Ekblad has published a paper detailing his research and a detailed history of the quiz. Of particular interest is the comparison of the AQ and Aspie Quiz scores, particularly for women. As many of us who’ve taken both have noticed, the AQ has a strong gender bias and the Aspie Quiz is more gender neutral. Anecdotally, the Aspie Quiz has always appeared to be a better predictor of whether someone is on the spectrum and that is addressed in the paper as well.

There are some aspects of the paper that I found problematic, but I’ll leave that to others to critique and focus here on the test itself. Before I do that, however, there is one sentence in the paper that jumped out at me that I want to share:

The idea that neurodiversity/autistic traits lie on the extreme end of a normal distribution is not supported by Aspie Quiz, rather the neurodiversity traits seem to have its own normal distribution overlapping the normal distribution of typical traits.

For those who have wondered why they receive two scores on this test, I think the above quote sums it up nicely. It’s also a good response to the oft-repeated fallacy that “everyone is on the spectrum” or “everyone is a little autistic.”

Taking the Test

To take the Aspie Quiz, start here. You have the choice to login/register or to proceed directly to the test. If you choose the former, you’ll be contributing to the test developer’s research regarding the stability of test scores over time (assuming you take the test more than once).

Once you’ve proceeded to the start of the test, you’ll first be asked some demographic questions. The information you share is used in the development of the test and has no impact on your scoring.

The test itself is 128 questions, answered on a Likert scale. The choices are: don’t know, no/never, a little, yes/often. The test will take about 20 minutes, so be sure you have enough time to finish it before starting.

Scoring the Test

At the end of the test, you’ll get neurodiverse and neurotypical scores, along with a “likely” prediction. Here are mine:

  • Your neurodiverse (Aspie) score: 156 of 200
  • Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 54 of 200
  • You are very likely neurodiverse (Aspie)

You’ll also get a nice spider web graphic and the option to download a PDF with more details, which I highly recommend doing. The PDF contains detailed information about which questions count toward which aspect of your score and includes some background information that may be helpful in interpreting your scores in each category.

poly12e

On the previous version of the test, I scored:

  • Your Aspie score: 170 of 200
  • Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 32 of 200
  • You are very likely an Aspie

Since the last time I took the quiz, there are quite a few new questions and in particular a batch of new questions about sexuality and relationships. Given that I scored so high in Neurotypical attachment (i.e. sexuality) and relatively low in the social and contact on the neurodiverse side, I suspect the relationship and sexuality questions are the biggest factors in shifting my scores toward neurotypical.

Some of the questions in those areas were hard to answer accurately because they’re worded as if the test taker is seeking a romantic relationship or interested in dating, an assumption that doesn’t apply to either those in a monogamous relationship or those who are aromantic or asexual.

Although the quiz avoids gender bias, a few of the questions are biased in the direction of heterosexuality or presumption of asexuality as a non-neurotypical “preference”. More careful wording of some of the new relationship/sexuality questions to encompass both LGBTQ test takers and those in monogamous relationships would help mitigate some of this problem.

But I also think that the role of romantic and sexual preferences in the test outcome would benefit from a different approach. It’s stereotypical and ableist to assume that neurotypical people are sexual and neurodiverse people are not. The neurodiverse people that I know are distributed over a wide spectrum of sexuality and sexual preferences, from asexual to hypersexual and everything in between, just like the neurotypical people that I know.

Looking at the Attachment category questions in the PDF, all of the Neurotypical Attachment traits are related to sex. The Neurodiverse Attachment traits, on the other hand, are questionable in their relevance to attachment versus things like language pragmatics and learning social skills through rules. Surely neurotypical people are interested in aspects of attachment other than sex. More importantly, it’s disappointing to see a test of neurodiversity ascribing typical autistic social traits to “attachment disorder.”

Overall the new questions are much like those of the earlier version that I took: a mix of the highly relatable with the expected, plus a few that I have trouble tying back to any known autistic traits.

I was amused by “Do you have a need to confess?” because I’m so bad at lying or concealing things from people and inevitably feel the need to spill my guts at the drop of a hat. There were a few perplexing ones, including the one about walking behind people and the one about examining people’s hair. (And I still don’t get the slowly flowing water question – though I suspect it identifies people who are visual stimmers in general.) I wasn’t sure how to interpret the “afraid in safe situations” question. Maybe it’s meant to reveal phobias or irrational anxiety?

Finally, the “criticism, correction, direction” question is repeated twice with slightly different wording (possibly as a check question).

The Bottom Line

Of all the online tests I’ve evaluated, the Aspie Quiz has always felt like the most accurate in overall scoring and the most comprehensive in variety of questions and that’s still the case. I’ll be curious to see how re-takers feel about their scores and what direction, if any, scores have shifted in.

 

Asperger's Tests

Taking the Stroop Test

31 Comments

I took the Stroop test as part of my ASD evaluation and I’ve seen it recently on a list of online autism evaluation tests. While not strictly an autism test, it is often part of the test battery that is given at neuropsychological evaluations for autism.

The format of the Stroop test that I took during my evaluation was:

  • verbally reading a list of color words (blue, red, green) printed in black ink
  • verbally stating the color of a series of Xs printed in blue, red or green ink
  • verbally reading a list of color words that were printed in colored ink (i.e. RED printed in blue ink or RED printed in red ink)

The Stroop test is a test of executive function. Our brain’s natural tendency is to read words that we’re presented with; noticing the color of the ink the word is printed in is a secondary priority. The Stroop test asks us to inhibit our first instinct (reading the word) in favor of stating the color of the ink. Doing so draws heavily upon the executive functions of inhibition and attention.

Because autistic people typically have impaired executive function, we often score below average on the Stroop test. The time taken to complete the test is also seen as a measure of cognitive processing speed, another area where autistic individuals will typically have a below average result.

There are quite a few other conditions that also cause cognitive “interference” on this test, resulting in below average scores, including ADHD, dementia, brain damage, depression, schizophrenia and addiction. While the results of the Stroop test can give you some insight into your executive function abilities, it’s not strictly related to being or not being autistic.

Taking the Test

You can take a mini version of the Stroop test here.  The test site is ugly and has lots of ads that you’ll have to ignore. Read the instructions in the center of the page and click the green button when you’re ready to begin. The test has 20 items and will take a couple of minutes to complete. You’ll receive your scores on the final screen of the test.

Scoring the Test

The reason I called this a mini version of the Stroop test is because it has only 20 trials. The version of the test I took at my evaluation had 300 trials across the 3 different types of tasks, with each set of 100 having a 45-second time limit.

The online version presents 15 incongruent (ink color and word do not match) and 5 congruent (ink color and word match) trials. It then gives you a score showing your congruent and incongruent results, with number correct and the average processing time for each. Generally, most people respond more quickly the congruent pairs than the incongruent pairs.

Here are my scores for the online version:

  • Congruent: 5 Correct, avg response time: 11.78 seconds
  • Incongruent: 15 Correct, avg response time: 10.20 seconds

(Admittedly I have an advantage because I was familiar with the test format and I think my scores reflect that.)

And here are my scores for the paper version (raw score, followed by percentile – in both cases higher is better):

  • Word (color words/black ink): 82, 12th percentile
  • Color (Xs/3 ink colors): 91, 27th percentile
  • Color-Word (color words/3 ink colors): 110, 75th percentile
  • Interference (calculated from other scores): 121, 92nd percentile

If you look at both sets of scores, you’ll see that I’m better at the incongruent tasks. I got higher scores on the Color-Word and Interference scores for the paper test and had a faster average response time for the incongruent pairs on the online test.

When I saw my scores from the paper test, I was shocked by how poorly I did on the first two tasks, which felt effortless when I was taking them. I have no explanation for the disparity in my performance, except that maybe when a task is more difficult, I pay closer attention and therefore do well on it. I had a similar outcome on another “easy version-hard version” test during my evaluation which supports this supposition but there may be another explanation that has gotten by me.

The Bottom Line

How useful is the online Stroop test? I think it’s more valuable as a curiosity satisfier than an actual measure of cognitive processing. First, it doesn’t have the “priming” tasks of reading the words in black ink and naming the colors of the Xs, which create performance patterns in the brain, supposedly making the color-word task more difficult.

Second, there is no overall time limit so the test taker doesn’t feel pressured to rush through as many items as possible to complete the test in the allotted time. The response time score compensates for this a bit, but there’s no mention at the beginning of the test that one is being timed.

Finally, the number of items is too few to cause the cognitive fatigue that makes the paper test challenging.

Projects

Melange Survey

76 Comments

We’ve arrived at the final set of survey questions for this round. Phew. These are the questions that didn’t seem to fit thematically in any of the other surveys. I wish I had a snappy title for it, but I ended up going with the obvious. Okay, maybe not that obvious.

You can answer here or anonymously at Survey Monkey

  1. Do you think you would have performed better academically if you hadn’t devoted part of your brain power to performing “normally”?
  2. What [stereo]typical ASD trait you lack would you want to have? Eg maths genius 😉
  3. Do you have a job or volunteer activity that you are particularly suited to because of your autism?
  4. Do you group letters on things like signs and license plates until you can get an even number?
  5. What can’t you still believe everyone doesn’t think?
  6. If you are interested in something typical for your gender (e.g. fashion for girls) are you interested in a different way? (e.g. hats not shoes or historical costume rather than being “bang on trend”)
  7. Do you think some of the appeal of a favourite subject/special interest is that immersion in a topic acts as priming making it easier and more comfortable to remember and think about it? Do you have trouble remembering facts on demand for other subjects you aren’t spending time on even though you know it and find it interesting?
  8. Do you have difficulty concentrating when listening to radio/audio drama?
  9. What was the most helpful thing after you received your diagnosis? Why?
  10. Do you dislike wearing jewellery?
Projects

Health Care Survey

43 Comments

We have two more sets of survey questions. This week’s questions are all about health care related topics. Next week is a mix of all the questions I couldn’t figure out how to categorize.

As always anyone who identifies as autistic is welcome to participate. You can answer here in the comments or anonymously at Survey Monkey.

  1. Do you have more dental issues than your peers? Do your autistic children have more dental issues? Do cleanings hurt you more than fillings?
  2. Do you find there are certain medical staff that are better at your autism disclosure than others (nurses better than doctors, blood test/ lab workers better than nurses, specialists better?) ect?
  3. Do you have a code word or phrase that helps you the most during emergency appointments?
  4. How do you manage sensory issues at the doctors?
  5. Does the anesthetic or freezing cause more pain after than not having it for fillings that do not involve the roots? Do you have unusual reactions to the freezing agents?
  6. Do you find you act more or less autistic at the Dentists? Do you prefer to disclose or leave out your diagnosis at the Dentists? Is there any trick that helps you get through the appointments?
  7. Do you go for the usual tests or do you wait them out longer because the side effects of said tests usually cause you more problems than the test themselves? ( e.g. colonoscopy, mammogram, gastroscopy.)
  8. Do you have unusual side effects to anesthetics,  painkillers or other medications?
  9. Does naturopathy generally accept you and address your issues better than allopathy?
  10. Does mental health support normally apply to you or do you find you defy the odds of symptomatic depression, anxiety etc. and need alternatives? What would you suggest to a doctor if you could in this regard?
Asperger's Tests, Projects

Social Interaction Survey

148 Comments

This week’s questions are all about general social interaction (next week is social communication). Some of these questions might hit a little close to home for some of us  because they touch on trust and vulnerability. Please don’t feel pressured to answer any questions that make you uncomfortable.

If you prefer to answer anonymously, you can do so at Survey Monkey.

1. Have you dated knowing you had Aspergers/Autism? If so, when and how did you disclose? How did that turn out?  How did you go about getting someone to date you?

2. How often do you like to go out? Do you prefer to do stuff alone? Do you find it difficult to motivate yourself to go out sometimes?

3. Do you talk a lot to people? A lot of books go on about how Aspies can talk the hind leg off a donkey about their pet topics  but I don’t have the desire to really talk to people.

4. For people diagnosed as an adult, do you have a changed perception of how others see you? for example how friendly/outgoing/confident you seem to them.

5. Do you see yourself as vulnerable because of ASD? Are you more likely to be persuaded to do something or taken advantage of than most other people might? Has your perception of this changed with age?

6. Trusting other people – over the years I have learnt that I am very poor at reading peoples intentions and have been taken advantage of. I have adjusted to this by needing to understand what is happening and needing to be able to logically join up what someone does and says into a consistent picture – or I don’t trust them. How do other people manage this?

7. Do you ever feel like you’re living on a different scale of time from other people? For example, do you hear about a new TV show and only watch it years later because it just didn’t seem urgent?

8. My therapist explained that extroverts gain energy from others and introverts gain energy from being alone, and that autistic people can be either or anywhere in between. She also said there are challenges for extrovert autistics because of the social difficulties making it hard to achieve needed social interaction. (more details) Thinking about it in these terms, where would you place yourself on a continuum from introvert to extrovert? Is this different from how you would think of yourself using the terms in a broader sense, and is this different from how others see you?

 

Projects

Coping Strategies Survey

191 Comments

This week’s questions are all about coping strategies. Traveling, panic attacks, aging, job hunting, emotions, obsessions – it’s a great mix and I think we’re going to come up with a great big pool of potential strategies that we can all draw on when needed.

You know the drill–if you’re on the spectrum, either formally diagnosed or self-identified, you’re welcome to join in. Answer as many or as few as you like. Do it here or anonymously at Survey Monkey.

 

1. I am wondering if travelling is hard for all Aspies as they age or if it is just me?  I like my home at night and my own environment. I prefer to be as close to it as possible…and I get sick or upset if I stay away…my tolerance is two days from home max and two weeks to recover…Does anyone else feel this way? Does it get worse with age or in certain decades? more details here

2. Is liking or disliking foreign travel related to ability to pass for NT at home?

3. Do you experience problems with long flights? If yes, which aspects are most problematic? (which travel stages: e.g. planning, navigating airports, flying, unfamiliar surroundings at the destination etc – and which problematic factors: e.g. sensory overload, executive function issues, anxiety / panic attacks etc) How do you cope with long flights? (what are your coping strategies)

4. How do you cope with panic attacks in unavoidable situations that you can’t leave, such as during flights?

5. Do you find yourself getting more autistic as you get older? Did your coping strategies improve with age due to experience or psychological assistance (I shy away from the word ‘treatment’) or did they deteriorate over time because of a decrease in overall energy?

6. How do you cope with strong emotions, especially strong negative emotions, especially if you’re also alexithymic? How do you support someone going through a very difficult time emotionally (nothing practical to be done)? How do recognise what the feelings are, and how do you respond in a way that comforts the person?

7. How do you motivate yourself to job hunt? more details here

8. A question that is specifically for people who menstruate: do you notice changes during your menstrual cycle. With changes I mean changes in sensory perception, abilities to cope and/or compensate, EF, etc.

9. If you’ve been heavily obsessing about an interest for a while do you find you have to have a short break from it because it has got too intense?

10. Has anyone taken concerta/ritalin/other stimulant drug prescribed to help ADHD type symptoms and reacted very badly to them physically? What effect did it have on you in the short and long term?

 

Asperger's Tests

How We Experience the World Survey

191 Comments

I was stumped for a title on this one. The questions all center around various ways we experience the world around us, but they’re about as loosely related as you can get and still say there’s a theme.

If you want to answer anonymously, you can do so at Survey Monkey.

 

1. Is the fascination with certain topics usually a life-long one, persistent over many years, or subject to change ?

2. What are your special interests and on what scale do you engage in them?

3. What effect does alcohol have on you, particularly on your executive function or stimming?

4.  I’m wondering if sitting all crossed-up in chairs is an ASD ‘thing.’ (i.e. do you do this?)

5. Do you have some very specific memories? Such as “ah-ha!” moments that you can draw up much more clearly than most memories, involving not only a picture but feelings, perhaps sounds and smells etc. as well and the image is VERY clear whereas most memories are a thought.

6. Do you sometimes attribute feelings to inanimate objects? Do you feel like certain objects ‘want to’ be interacted with or will feel bad if you don’t use them? Do you explain some of your quirks in this way, for example thinking that street furniture or certain textures want to be touched/felt, rather than you want to touch them? Or does it feel this way but you translate it when talking to others?

7. Does arousal influence you in an autism-specific way? As in: Do you overload easily when aroused? Does arousal influence, for example, your verbal reasoning skills than you feel would be “normal”? Do you stim when aroused? (for clarification: the questioner described this question as being “personal” so I think they are referring to sexual arousal, but answer in whatever way is comfortable for you)

8. Do you have difficulty with sequencing – working out the order in which you need to do things – for example if you were preparing an unfamiliar meal with several elements, would you have difficulty balancing them all without explicit planning and measurement in advance? Do you often realise you’ve done things in the wrong order or in a very inefficient way?

9. Is your primary fantasy ‘stopping’? In school, I used to fantasize about spontaneously dropping unconscious. As an adult, I fantasize about leaving the social system entirely. more details here

10. We often hear about autistic children wandering off. Did you wander? Did you “disappear” frequently to the point that was upsetting to your family (or teachers?) Why did you wander off? What do you remember about it? Now that you are an adult do you still wander? Do you disappear (perhaps during sensory overload) without telling anyone that you need to remove yourself at this time? more details here

Asperger's Tests

Learning Differences/Disabilities Survey

134 Comments

We’re going to kick off a round of 4 (or maybe 5) Tuesday surveys (yay!) with a set of questions about specific learning differences (UK term) or learning disabilities (US term). All of these questions are by Quarries and Corridors and I have rather selfishly scheduled them first because I’ve been experiencing so many things mentioned here lately and want to hear about your experiences with them. But not worries – I’ll make sure everyone’s questions are included over the next few weeks.

The questions are detailed, so feel free to answer as few or as many as you want with as much or little detail as you like.

You can answer here in a comment or you can answer anonymously at Survey Monkey. (If at all possible, it would be great if you can answer here. There ended up being hundreds of anonymous answers to bring over from Survey Monkey last time which is awesome but also a lot  of work, y’all.)

Learning Differences/Disabilities Questions

1. As well as an autistic spectrum condition do you also have a specific learning difference (aka US English ‘learning disability’) such as dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, nonverbal learning disability, ADHD etc? Even if you don’t have a diagnosed/labelled SpLD, do you have cognitive traits commonly associated with SpLDs like slow processing speed, below average spelling, fragile working memory, poor concentration etc?

2. Are you actually unusually good at any of the above? For example unusually fast reading speed, learned to read early, extremely good at spelling, usually good short term memory, extremely good spacial reasoning, adept at doing things efficiently without conscious planning, excellent concentration regardless of interest level etc?  Continue reading Learning Differences/Disabilities Survey →