Some people make it up

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Awesome! I'm glad we could help!
Procrastination is the best. Why? Because you find something else to with your mind while you are not doing the thing you don't want to do. Freedom from drudgery FTW!

Of course, the deadlines never really go away. Good luck writing your docs.

What do you do with the electric shock machine?

I was afraid to ask.

Yes, takes me a long time to activate the language functions, and hard to deactivate and hard to .....

I think I'm scared that if you tested me, I'd come out different like the younger people and I'm in the married employed group. So I'm scared by the awareness I am one of the apparently few, at least that's what I think from how people react and how off I was in a few areas of testing in my 20s. Maybe not, but you know, it would be nice to fit in somewhere. And at the same time, the idea that I would not look autistic anymore is scary because of the amount of effort it is to do things NTs take for granted. It's too much sometimes. Others may have similar strong reactions to the idea of being tested as we read about what you are doing.

Maybe you are procrastinating because it's hard to organize, executive functioning problems. Maybe it's fun. Maybe it's fun to get others thoughts and try to weave together something more meaningful.

Do you or can you test for difficulties activating and deactivating language versus emotion or task completion activities? It's just, what you wrote made me wonder whether that area can or is being explored. I am able I think to do all of the neurotypical small talk things, so if you were watching you'd see that. I think. But it takes me longer to respond to the other persons cue and the whole process is much less efficient. At the same time, it rambles more. So I wonder, when you look at the group of employed and married persons who have ASD, have we all needed to some degree to master the ability to fit in enough to manage the tasks that are looked at, but because it wasn't intuitive, our brains maybe have had to find another route, the thinking through what to do route, which takes just a bit longer. Just curious your direction. And thinking about, what is it that makes us different to the world. And how much shod I and need I let it matter?

But the sort of testing is for the purpose of discovery, not putting people in one of two bins: NT or ASD.

The consensus among researchers seems to be that Autism is not a monolithic thing, it's a cluster of conditions with slightly or very different etiologies, and presentations. This kind of research is certain to result in recognition of more subtypes. If you look at the very interesting talk by the genetics researcher Wendy Chung ( http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt254660.html ) you can learn about patterns of difference resulting from duplication and deletion errors in the chromosome 16p11.2. If you have duplicates of this sequence, you get one set of issues, if you have deletions you get another set of issues. One basic cause, two clusters of effects.

But these copy errors are directly linked to only about 1 in 100 cases of ASD. That's a lot of people, but there are going to be studies and tests showing different causes and different clusters of symptoms for the other 99% of autistics. It makes sense that new subtypes will emerge from this.

I have a job and a family, so I might be in the same subtype as you. Life is also really, really hard for me--and that's why I got the diagnosis. That and fitting the diagnostic criteria. If the tests result in new subtypes and new diagnostic procedures, I can only see that identifying what your or my particular issues are with more precision. It's not like your issues will go away or people will claim you don't have them because you don't fit some profile elsewhere on the spectrum.

If nothing else, the kind of testing btbnnyr is describing is likely to result in your being able to say "I am autistic, subtype X" and know this with certainty. You won't then have people saying "your autism isn't like mine, so I don't think you have it."

What I would hate most is a world where everyone who talks to me for more than a few minutes registers something different that I don't see or understand but know exists, or maybe I'm just beginning to see and understand, and in which the professionals disagreed with the lay population and said I was normal. I need more consistency and logic.

I remember a psychologist evaluating my daughter who told me I was wrong with my concerns she had ASD, told me my child would not talk to others or socialize normally because she was anxious and it was my fault. And no amount of later professionals saying the psychologist "made it up" that is, was wrong, my child has ASD, I have ASD, she missed the boat, nothing helps me with the leftover accusation in my brain that it's my fault for who I am. Not how I'm wired, who I am.

Because of how badly confused the accusation of making up ASD got me, because I have not been able to get over this even though I know factually it's not true from subsequent providers, and because I'm still afraid, I feel that the risk of harm to people who have ASD is too high to be worth our focusing on those who make it up. I'm sure there could be a few, so what? I never want to see anyone hurt the way I was by the accusation again through the actions of others who have ASD, I understand not everyone will agree with me, but I don't want to be part of a situation that can hurt people the way I was that I can't figure out how to recover from is all,

I am thinking battery of tasks (fast + cheap + automated + operable by mental health nurse so no costly clinical psychologist required) in social and non-social areas to identify subgroups of autism and severity of autistic trait for each task. For person being tested, this could provide information about brain functions and from those, what kinds of accommodation they need and for children, what kinds of education in K-12.

Do you believe it will become possible to bypass using an experienced highly skilled professional some day?

I am not sure, still in beginning stages, but the goals are to increase objectivity and decrease subjectivity in diagnosis.

Also interested in separating autistic traits from level of functioning, as tests might show e.g.g. more high-functioning person with stronger autistic traits, or less high-functioning person with weaker autistic traits, in addition to more eggspected directions, or someone who is impaired in functioning not testing out as autistic, in which case autism wouldn't account for their functioning impairments.

It could be a really good thing, if you can do this well. It will be a lot of work to go against the way things have been done and make this work for girls and women, too. But if you can do that I think it could really improve lives and understanding.

I hope procrastinating by posting about your research continues.

Diagnostic standards and a level of professionalism should always be maintained. And we don't know if it's a few or many. There are different opinions on this subject. I think harm may be done by over-diagnosis. It would trivialize the condition.

But of course better understanding of the condition might repudiate such thoughts.

edit** re-worded it.