Age of diagnosis survey

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It’s certainly sad that only 16% of people diagnosed are employed. Autistic folks have useful skills in the workplace. So what if they don’t want to participate in the football pools!

A job shouldn’t be about navigating social intricacies that are irrelevant to the job at hand. So what if I don’t want to go to the pub after work!

I'm still a husband and still used to being ignored but can't resist offering two comments. Reading them is optional; taking them serious would be above and beyond the call of duty.

(1) Employed? Unemployed? I'm voluntarily, happily, blissfully, ecstatically, and very comfortably retired. While I'm not working I'm not exactly unemployed because I am not seeking and do not want or need to work. I kind of hope I was counted as being in a later stage of employment.

(2) The pool of folk on WP might be useful for another research study I hope someone^{maybe you?} does in the future.

Hypothesis: Early upbringing can affect the future success and happiness of an Autie. (Example: Parents never divorced; how many times the family moved; grew up in urban, suburban, or rural environment; separate bedroom; color-scheme in bedroom; autism tolerance; and so on. Probably much, much further on.)

Ideal but impossible experiment: Get a pool of very young Auties, bring them up differently, and see which ones are more successful and happy fifty years later.

Plan "B": Find a pool of older Auties (e.g., on WP) and try to correlate their success and happiness with whatever can be determined about their early upbringing.

You're spot on. The book I read recently implied just that. It pointed out the irony that one of the leading US researches over four decades ago who encouraged initialization of Autistic children, chose not to institutionalize his own Autistic son whom is doing quite well, while children who were institutionalized (in US often abusive system) did not do well at all. The books named beneficial institutions in Germany, England and the US that respected and supported Autistic children in finding their niche. One might suggest the "institution of parenting" would have similar range of methods and results.

Will do!! !

Trying to do the test with the pictures of eyes I had a sudden realisation.
I’ve always liked cartoons in fact I still do, or animations in general. Everything from Tom and Jerry to the current Pixar Movies.

The reason is the expressions, particularly with the eyes. They are so much easier to follow than trying to figure out a real face.

I’m looking at so many of the pictures in this survey of the eyes and either I can’t see what emotion they have or none of the answers to choose don’t seem to fit. Unless it’s clearer as with following the rules with how animation expressions are drawn

My thought is that animations would be similar to real-life expressions but BIGGER. Kind of like how stage theatre is (big expressions) relative to movie acting (small expressions). Welcome to WrongPlanet (WP).

I finished the survey.

I usually have no idea what the eyes convey. I have to look at the whole face.

Done but I constantly find myself thinking "it depends" for most of the questions. Plus, my camouflage is pretty ingrained by now and I don't really think about it as I'm doing it, unless I'm in a situation where I have to monitor it, like when I'm very tired or already anxious (like a job interview).
It also depends who I'm with, if it's my Mum or husband then I'm completely me, everyone else gets varying degrees of mask. I do catch myself studying the interactions of people on TV still, as in, "I didn't know you could react to that information in that way, I will have to remember that." - I don't do this on purpose, I think it's an old coping mechanism that's on auto-pilot now.

Since I've been working/going to school from home for almost ten years I don't interact for long periods of time socially with people other than family so answering some questions was difficult. When I did interact with people a lot socially when I was younger there was almost always alcohol involved. I kept to myself at work with headphones and sunglasses on which lead to an email that they wanted to consider me for a management position if I would "work on my people skills". Instead I asked if I could work from home.

Would I want to go to the theater or museum - it depends, how many people will be at either/or, what's showing/exhibited, what time of day on what day of the week, etc. Most of the questions are like this. I said the same thing to the neuropsych that diagnosed me.

I basically just guessed at the eyes. Wish I knew how I did!

Hi everyone, I've been offline for a few days for various reasons, the most exciting of all being that I've got the verbal go ahead for 2 more studies. I still need to submit ethics applications but hopefully will soon be recruiting self diagnosed people for a similar study and interviewing people with different diagnostic statuses. Fingers crossed.

Thanks to everyone who is still doing this survey, I only need about 10 more people and am able to keep it open until I have the right number of responses.

Lovely to read. All the best with the continuing work.

Thanks Rowan. I still need a few more people so please continue to do the survey https://kentpsych.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_e5TIIt9ODhMsQi9

I'll be sure to post here when it's closed.