Reasons for some specific stims

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It's a pity that not more people can live like that.



Same as my nick. It's called RDOS. That's why I named my site rdos.net, and use it as a nick on forums.

Update on the remaining ones:

"When rehearsing" failed miserably, but thinking is one the border so could be used if nobody can come up with anything better.



For pleasure works (as it does for walking on toe as well), so this one is solved



Still no solution for this one. For pleasure also fails miserably. If one should go by old cartoons (which seem to have a lot of relevance) it might be frustration



When hyperfocused works, but there might possibly be better alternatives still



When anxious works pretty well.

I am not sure why I stim, but I think it has something to do with having a lot of energy while sitting still.

As for cracking joints, how about something practical? My muscles are tight and bother me. My joints bother me in an analogous way. So I stretch and crack joints a lot.

PS any comments on Cheap oil, globalization, etc & the Neanderthal Theory http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp5430712.html???

For pleasure for all practical purposes is identical to "not for emotional reasons", and so these stims become uninteresting.



Just did. I don't regularly read that section.

Because it is that complex.

I may have misunderstood your intentions, and what I get from reading back your posts it that you search for possible reasons for stimming, which you can then use an inquiry to see what most people answer.

What I meant by my other post is that a quiz is not going to give accurate results as to why people stim, it will however give insight into why people THINK they stim, those two are very different and should not be confused.

Just because you think that you stim because you are bored, does not mean that you stim because you are bored.

If your goal is to research why people think they stim, then this will be possible with your theory, but if you want to research the origins of stimming behavior itself, you will need at least neurological research, psycho-analysis ( video for instance) and psychological examinations done face to face by a professional, in order to back up your theories.

The only thing a quiz on what people think will give, is a general idea of how people experience their autism from their personal perspective.

Quiz results can differ depending on how a person feels at that exact moment, and that is also why for instance a self-diagnosis using internet tests is never 100% accurate.

I hope you find the results you are looking for, but I hope you do not use your conclusions for gross generalizations that lack scientific proof, good luck nevertheless.

That's correct. Many people have no idea why they stim, so might deliver random reasons or check "not for emotional reason". That will be noise in the data. However, when you take large samples (1000s of subjects), the noise will average out since people that just guess will choose random answers. The hardest thing is to select out the noise of thinking that every stim is unrelated to emotion.



Naturally, the best way would be to observe many people in a natural setting (I have a small dataset on this that I let guide some of my choices), but that is impossible to do online. What I want to do is to provide data that will motivate this research in a natural setting, as nobody will do that when they think stims are just random movements.



I will not work with diagnoses. I will work with my own neurodiversity-definition that will soon be published (probably next week).

Using this inquiry to make sure there will be better information available trough research, is very much needed to cause further understanding of the autistic mind amongst therapists, autistic people themselves and parents of people with autism, and that is something I can only applaud, I hope the current researchers on this topic will see that as well.

Keep up the good work

The noise may or may not average out-- you're assuming that wrong guesses about why people actually stim would be random. People are generally not randomly guessing about their own behavior; there are agreed-upon ways of understanding behaviors and answers about one's own psychology are likely to be biased in a certain direction.

For example, there is a certain "meme" going around the autistic community that the purpose of or underlying motivation behind stims is for relieving stress and anxiety. Willard articulated this position very well earlier in this thread. So you might expect that people without insight into the source of their stimming behavior would more often guess that they do it because of anxiety, because they had heard this explanation before, and it lines up with standard NT explanations of similar repetitive behavior such as fidgeting. So in this scenario (which may or may not be a true one, I am just coming up with a plausible way your results could be messed up), the answers you would get from autistic people self-reporting their motivations behind stimming would be biased in favor of anxiety explanations and not actually random. So again, you would not have any more insight into why people actually stim, just why they think they do.

You're also not distinguishing between stims, "fidgets", tics, neurological issues like dyskinesia, and obsessive-compulsive ritual behaviors. As an example, someone could tap their fingers because they

1. find it provides self-stimulation or sensory regulation (autistic stims)
2. are merely bored while waiting for something (possibly stims, but more often considered "normal" fidgeting)
3. experience regular irresistible urges to do it (tics)
4. involuntarily twitch their fingers (neurological damage or disorder)
5. feel like they must do it in sets of 5 or else something bad will happen (OCD)

So you could be aiming to study stims but instead are grouping a bunch of behaviors under one umbrella that should not be.

Autistic people often have comorbid tic disorders, neurological issues, and OCD, so you should be especially careful that you are excluding those kinds of behaviors and reports of such behaviors from your analysis if you are trying to get at autism-specific stimming (and not OCD or Tourette's or Tardive Dyskinesia repetitive behaviors, for example). Distinguishing between fidgeting and stimming is much harder-- you should probably have a position on whether they are the same thing (but just seen more often and more stigmatized in ASDs) or different things. If you think they are different, then you also need to exclude fidgeting behaviors and people's reports of fidgeting from your analysis.

I don't intend to be mean or tear you down or anything-- just spotting issues with your project. I wish your project the best and that is why I am giving you critiques.

To answer your original question, I don't actually have much insight into my reasons for stimming, but here is what I would say if you asked me:
I walk on my toes because it feels right to do it.
I tap my fingers because I enjoy creating rhythms and counting off patterns.
I bite my mouth area out of anxiety or boredom.
I twirl my hair out of boredom.
I don't usually do the other things on your list.

I'm tired.



I'm awake and conscious.



I'm thinking/concentrating.



I don't.



My joints are stiff.



My hands are cold.



Depends how hard it is. If it's hard; this is a meltdown. If it's just gently chewing on the side of my fingers, it's either "I'm awake and conscious" or "I'm thinking".

So what you're saying is that you're just going to dismiss data that you find uninteresting?

Of course not, but stims related to non-emotional reasons, or that doesn't occur more frequently in neurodiverse people, are uninsteresting in relation to neurodiverse communication, which is the object of the study. So, no, I won't dismiss any data, just identify these stims as not interesting.

The people from the autistic community that answers are a small minority. But I agree that popular ideas among people in general could have an effect, but then we still talk about something that is observed by somebody and turned into a belief.



They are not. They are biased against bored. That's why I consider bored to be the default answer which often could be wrong.



The hypothesis is that this is a false model of stims and tics. In fact, the hypothesis is that tics are the same thing as stims, and that some stims/tics have physiological reasons (note, physiological and not neurological). In addition to that, a set of stims are related to Aspie hunting, and thus have no communicative role (walking on toe, spinning). The physiological and hunting-related stims are anticipated to give best results when reasons like "for pleasure" are given.



Since the hypothesis is that there is only one function for these things (and not a multitude like stims, tics, OCD or anything else), it is very important to include these as well when they look like stims.

Besides, the proof in regards to tics comes from the evaluation of a Tourette syndrome test run in Aspie Quiz a few years back. It turned out that each and every issue in that test correlated strongly to stims, meaning that it was impossible to distinguish them. To ask participants themselves if they think they stim or have tics thus is an unusable method that is certain to create biases based on beliefs.

OK, so now I have 22 stims that either have a large difference in prevalence between populations and/or significantly worse results when NTs judge the reason. All of them have reasonable rates of "wrong emotion" in the Aspie population. I'm collecting a larger sample with these now so I can reach better statistical significance. A few 1,000 answers would be reasonable.

The emotions covered are nervous, anxious, stressed, frustrated, anticipating, excited, angry, happy and upset. In addition to that I have for pleasure, hyperfocused, thinking and closed state of mind.

I think that is enough to show that it is possible that the natural way for neurodiverse people to express emotions is through body movements rather than with facial expressions.

All the emotions with bored as reason failed, and doesn't seem to be related to neurodiversity.

Agree.