I've long thought that had the child-psyche-surveillance-net been in existence when I was at school in the 1970s then I might well have been 'diagnosed' and formerly labelled as 'mildly autistic', and probably have had my life-chances curtailed as a result of that label (not because of the mild autism).
Anyway, I used this week's POB WOTW challenge as an opportunity to finally find out whether I am 'on the Spectrum', and to do so I took an online 'autism test' - which consisted of 50 questions (see below for more details).
The results...
(I entered a pseudonym!)
And no surprise at all to me - precisely the result I was expecting based on the particular scores the questionnaire designers assigned to the particular answers they designed to go with particular questions they'd selected.
Analysis of the Questions.....
This really was one of THOSE questionnaires where it's obvious what question and answers are going to score you as either mildly or majorly autistic...
Here are the first two thirds of the questions (you get to choose four likert scale responses from strongly agree through strongly disagree, albeit worded to fit the question more appropriately.)
- I prefer to do things on my own
- I prefer to do things the same way over and over again (I find repetition comforting)
- If I try to imagine something, I find it very easy to create a picture in my mind.
- I frequently get so strongly absorbed in one thing that I lose sight of other things.
- I find background noise distracting
- I usually notice car number plates or similar strings of information.
- Other people frequently tell me that what I’ve said is impolite, even though I think it is polite.
- When I’m reading a story, I can easily imagine what the characters might look like.
- I am fascinated by dates
- In a social group, I can easily keep track of several different people’s conversations.
- I find social situations easy
- I tend to notice details that others don't
- I'd rather go to a library than a party
- I find making up stories easy
- I am more drawn to people than objects
- I have strong interests which I get upset about if i can't pursue
- I enjoy social chit chat
- When I talk, it isn’t always easy for others to get a word in edgeways.
- I am fascinated by facts
- When I’m reading a story, I find it difficult to work out the characters’ intentions.
- I don’t particularly enjoy reading fiction.
- I find it hard to make new friends
- I notice patterns in things
- I'd rather go to the theatre than the museum
- It does not upset me if my daily routine is disturbed.
I lost the will to cut and paste half way in!
To my (apparently autistic) mind the above is measuring the extent to which someone likes socialising, the extent to which they like facts over fiction and imagination and the extent to which the like routine as part of their daily life.
This could easily attract half the population in the autistic net.
Glad I was born when I was...
I'm very thankful I was born when I was because, back then in the 1970s and 1980s when I went through school surveillance was quite mild - marketisation only came in 1988 and I did my GCSEs in 1989, so I GOT OUT just as surveillance was starting.
So I escaped by quite a long way the expansion of psychological surveillance into schools, including screening for all sorts of 'disorders' such as dyslexia (which is STANDARD now) and autism, the later will catch any child in its next that a teacher suspects of having autistic tendencies.
Anyway, I know I'm not that autistic, I know it's just a tendency towards it - I don't suffer strong emotions, I don't like socialising, I like routine, and a whole load other aspects of my being that would probably put me 'away from normal' on a psychological spectrum.
As a sociologist I also know this is precisely what you don't want to happen - you don't want to be subjected to a standard established by a group of professionals which then grades and labels you as 'not normal' - well, not as a kid at least, because that would mean very possibly differential treatment, exclusion from some things and possibly even more surveillance on top of the norm.
So I'm very glad I was just able to carry on as I was back in the day, no surveillance, no test, no label.
God knows what that process would have done to me, there's a 99% chance it would have damaged me.
I really pity anyone like me that's going through school today. Their chances of just being left the fuck alone, which is precisely what you want if you got mild autism, are smaller than ever.