#diagnostic tools

I think we've all been part of this interaction at some point.

An artsy conveniently consolidated stack of North Devon Gravel Tempered Earthenware potsherds I made while counting them to catalogue.

Note the dual tones of grey and pink in the fabric (the clay part) of the ceramic. This isn’t the best picture to see it in, but on close inspection you can spot bits of gravel baked into the fabric: that process is called tempering and is where this ceramic type gets the second half of its name.

About This Artifact:

North Devon GT is an utilitarian ceramic from England commonly found on American Colonial sites from around 1680 to mid 18th century when another type of coarse, everyday pottery came into fashion. Common uses for this type were as milkpans, jugs, “and small storage jars though the latter are uncommon after about 1720 (Ivor Noël Hume, A Guide to Artifacts of Colonial America).”

Notes:

I would like to caution heavily against relying on quizzes or checklists to try to diagnose autism. 

A quiz or checklist can provide a general sense of whether or not there’s a chance you’re on the spectrum, however, these quizzes are neither sufficient to determine autism nor reliable. 

Many of these tools simply do not go in-depth enough to get enough information about a person to even start to guess if they may be autistic.  Even for those that ask a lot of questions, many of the questions are repeated and a large number rely on stereotypes. 

If you are looking to self-diagnose, it’s ok to use these quizzes as a first stepping stone, but these should never be used as the basis for a self-diagnosis. It is so important to learn extensively about autism and understand the diagnostic criteria to know whether or not you are actually autistic. 

If you are interested in pursuing a self-diagnosis, I recommend starting here. 

I know it’s so tempting to just want to find something that will give you a quick yes or no, but knowledge and understanding of self (what a self-diagnosis really is) are not that easily found. 

-Sabrina

The AQ is a freely available self-report schedule. It is used alone as a pre-screening schedule but it can also be used in conjunction with other schedules like the RAADS-R, DISCO, and generalized schedules like the MMPI.

It is important to note that schedules like the AQ and the RAADS-R absolutely are intended to be self-report. The scoring of these schedules is also standard, and there is no reason why a computer can’t do it - in fact, most professionals rely on computer scoring.

You can, however, get these scores for free because they are standardized and well known.

So why self-report tests in a professional setting? Because no single test will ever tell you if you are autistic. They are used in conjunction with other tests, and what professionals are good at is identifying consistencies and discrepancies in your scores that allow them to:

1.) confirm a diagnosis

2.) rule out a diagnoses

3.) identify comorbidities

4.) identify fraudulent answers

Taking the self-report tests online is fine as long as you understand that what you are looking at is only one small clue in a broader mystery and that no single test is going to confirm anything.

That said, paying for these tests online as individual tests is… not fraudulent per se, but absolutely skeezy at the very least because accurate versions are abundantly available for free.

These are the ones that I prefer: http://aspietests.org/index.php

Note that these are only some of the tests that might be given by a clinician, and that the actual tests they give you can vary widely based on your developmental history interview.

Where tests differ between minors and adults, these tests will be for adults. These are also versions of the tests that can accurately diagnose non-male phenotypes of autism, but that doing so also requires knowledge by a clinician on how to interpret social-emotion reciprocation deficits in those phenotypes.

Put another way, the “female” phenotype of autism still meets the same criteria as the “male” phenotype, but what changes is how it meets those criteria. The self-report tests still accurately calculate for men or women, but it is the interpretation of those results by the clinician that messes up whether or not a person is autistic.

Part of this includes interpreting the empathy and emotional clinical observation tests and the emotional and empathy self-report tests.

Point of this… Avoid paying. Its probably a scam. No one test will tell you anything. It doesn’t matter if you are a boy or a girl because criteria don’t change, only how you get there changes. Taking multiple self-report tests in which are taken in good faith with exaggeration will give you a fairly reasonable baseline, but cannot diagnose autism because clinical observational testing is still required to compare to the results of self-report tests.