How can you tell if someone is autisic?

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JimmyNeurtonRules
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13 Feb 2008, 5:00 pm

My ways for telling if someone is autistic is:

1. How they talk

2. Weird behavior



Stevopedia
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13 Feb 2008, 5:05 pm

-Watch and/or look for stims
-Speech mannerisms
-Social clumsiness
-Interests
-Intelligence

These are geared towards higher-functioning autistics, and are of my own creation.



sarahstilettos
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13 Feb 2008, 5:06 pm

Since I got my diagnosis I've been vaguely looking around to see if I can identify traits in anyone else. But I came to the conclusion that you can't ever be sure, not without knowing a person very well.

Only one person did I feel confident to diagnose - a man on my bus who had a very severe stim. He lolled his head down gradually and then jerked it up repeatedly, all the time he was on the bus. I guess probably the last thing he wants is peoples pity but I couldn't help feeling a bit sorry for him.



Tim_Tex
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13 Feb 2008, 5:16 pm

I don't think we can tell just by someone's physical appearance.


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13 Feb 2008, 5:17 pm

Stevopedia wrote:
-Intelligence


Just keep in mind, Intelligence is not part of the official diagnosis. People do not have to be geniuses to be autistic.



k96822
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13 Feb 2008, 5:18 pm

Tim_Tex wrote:
I don't think we can tell just by someone's physical appearance.


In some ways, their photographs are a clue. For me, it is over-smiling that does not match my eyes. Others look angry (which is true when I'm not smiling). It's all about the facial expressions-- if they do not seem to be telling a consistent story, they just might be autistic.



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13 Feb 2008, 5:43 pm

It might be hard to tell out in public. some of us are getting good at pretending to act normal.

I generally look for the markers I have.

Stimming, odd social interactions, voice levels to loud to soft , strong interests, I try to see if they are looking others in the eyes or staring, present one second and gone the next ( like mentally checking out). All the Autistic traits of AS/Autism.

I don't think we can tell just by looking at the body of some one. You have to incorporate other factors in to the whole picture.

But I love trying to spot one!


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anbuend
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13 Feb 2008, 7:33 pm

I don't think that it's fully possible to spot autistic people, but I seem more capable of it than a lot of people trained in the area. (As in I have spotted people in seconds who had the diagnosis, but that some clueless professionals had watched for an hour and said they "saw no sign of it".)

Stimming is one obvious thing.

Having unusual intonations to the voice is another. There are several different forms this can take, and not all of them are as obvious as people would think. Some of them are incredibly subtle patterns of pauses, or talking in recognizable and repetitive clumps of words that show they are echoing them over and over while searching for the words they want.

Unusual body posture is another. Again, this can be subtle. Slightly stiffer than usual, slightly bent over, slight exaggeration (or its opposite) to movements, involuntary repetitions of movements or parts of movements.

What they react to around them is another thing. Non-autistic people have a strange tendency, in groups, to all be reacting to the same things as each other. Autistic people are often reacting to something slightly different than everyone around them.

Having body language that is not fully synchronized with everyone else's, same with conversational timing being slightly out of synch.

And this is in addition to all the most stereotypical things about autistic people, which might or might not be there in any given person. There's lots more, too. It's easier, though, for me to say that someone seems autistic, than to say someone definitely isn't, because there are so many ways autistic people can hide.


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13 Feb 2008, 8:45 pm

Damn. . . I'd get labelled as autistic immediately.
I'd assumed it'd be harder to tell. . .

Though, I must say those things tend to come up in me a lot more in public and under stress.



anbuend
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13 Feb 2008, 11:29 pm

I forgot, also, to mention that unusual amounts of stillness can be just as telling as unusual amounts of movement. Especially if the stillness is in an area of the body that is usually constantly being animated among most non-autistic people. Also, using the minimum number of body parts necessary to get a job done. (Those were all things I noticed when I finally thought "What are people seeing as weird about me?" and videotaped myself -- when not stimming, I'm very, very still, rather than usual level of still.)

To elaborate more on some voice patterns I've seen:

1. Monotone, or more monotone than would be expected for the person's gender/culture/etc.

2. Going up and down in an extremely regular rhythm.

3. Putting stress on unusual parts of words.

4. Loud, unmodulated, and really grating on the ear.

5. One woman I know "made" her voice in order to make speeches, copying her intonations off people on the radio, and could make speeches before she could hold good conversations. Her voice in conversation now sounds like she's making speeches while in regular conversation.

6. Tiny and quiet, extremely breathy.

7. High-pitched and rapid, like a tape being played too fast. (I have known some autistic people who were considered nonverbal primarily because nobody ever bothered to notice that those were words they were saying.)

8. Stuttering, either on single syllables or on entire words.

9. Speaking. One. Word. At. A. Time.

10. Seeming to spit words or phrases out with great force and difficulty.

11. Something that sounds almost as if it's cut and pasted from different sources. As if someone actually took different people saying different words, totally stripped them of context, and pasted them all together. Could be mistaken for a speech synthesizer.

12. Severe articulation problems that can make it hard to discern that the person is talking at all, or what they are saying.

13. Stringing together phrases in a way that doesn't have any smoothing out between them. (As in, it doesn't translate into a standard grammatical sentence.)

14. A lot of "Uh....." "Err...." etc.

15. Extremely nonstandard grammar, like the writing of my online friend where if she doesn't heavily edit first sounds like, "I to be of safe now and teached me the world is safe for me to be who I to be in life and not to be of what others expect me to be in the sense of changing me to be what I to not be, but to be true to self." (from here)

16. Saying things that the person doesn't seem to actually believe, or that seem incredibly out of character. (This can happen when scripting goes awry. And -- from experience -- boy can it go awry.)

17. Repeating what another person is saying, either out loud or under their breath, or even without vocalizing, just moving the lips or throat. (My father's mouth moves whenever other people talk, and my throat clenches to match different pitches I hear even without making them happen out loud.)

18. Repeating non-language sounds in the environment, like beeps, animals, car alarms, whatever.

19. Having several totally different voices (more than most people do in different situations) or having one identical voice in all situations regardless of whether it's considered "situation-appropriate" by others. The several different voices thing can be from echoing the accents of other people.

20. The person sounds like they are extremely detached from the words they are creating. I don't know what vocal qualities create that sound (and no it's not nasalness, someone once suggested that but it's wrong), but I can recognize it in other autistic people quite often, as well as people with aphasia and other things like that.

21. Actual nasalness, or otherwise resonating the voice in a different area than most people in the culture do.

22. Seeming to have an accent other than the one the person is born and raised with.

23. Having an extreme amount of momentum required for speaking, so talking on and on and on because if the person stops then they'll have trouble starting again.

And that's just a start. It's really hard to enumerate how many different vocal and word patterns there are, because there are lots. And some of these can also mean things besides autism, but when taken together with other autistic traits it's pretty easy to make a guess at least. (I've been told before that I ought to be employed in assessing people for autism, because my eyeballing of it is pretty accurate, but I can't imagine that job because I would never be able to give definite answers, only "That person seems to be" or "I can't see it but that doesn't mean anything because people can pass, especially often women.")


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14 Feb 2008, 1:42 am

In general you have to look at a person's character traits:

Nerdiness or geekiness

The degree to which someone will socially fit in with the crowd.

An analogy I like to use with Autism is someone standing outside a house looking in through the window wanting to go inside but not being able to find the door.


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oscuria
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14 Feb 2008, 2:12 am

Well, I am neither nerdy nor geeky. Neither do I look anything near geeky/nerdy, so I wouldn't fit that criterion.


But I try to see myself in other people, to see if I am actually that different or just normal. These are things that I do:

1) If someone is talking about their personal life, my mind may not be paying full attention to it and will wander to something else. This girl was talking about her difficulties in class, but all I could respond to that was "I don't like walking up/downstairs without holding onto the rail."

2) I am constantly looking around. I look very suspicious. If I am shopping, I will look behind me, to my sides, to everything. I quickly react to light, to noise, to color. My attention is quickly lost.

3) I find that when I speak I rhyme my words, or use alliteration. "I doont knoow about youu...buuut, I haave to go some...where." or "Is there something so strange about it? I tend to think not."

4) I wear the same kinds of clothes everyday. Buttoned long sleeved shirts, rolled up to my elbows. Similar in style and color.

5) I walk a bit weird. I have to look at the floor and follow a line, if not then I won't walk straight and move zig/zag. I also must be holding onto my backback and my shirt.

6) I tend to always look at the mouth of a person when they're speaking, or the floor or wall. I can never look a person in the eyes, I might get "lost" in them.

7) I am constantly moving my hands. I tap with the pen, tap with my fingers, tap on my pants, on my palm, on my wrist. I snap my fingers and neck. My legs shake. I switch position of my legs. The times I am very still, I look like I'm giving myself a hug.

8 ) I am disappointed in grades that others would be grateful for. If I get an A, I'll complain. If I get a B, I'll complain. I am also overly focused on the material.

There are more, but these are things I look at.



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14 Feb 2008, 3:48 am

some of the verbal cues listed could be as much for a hard-of-hearing person as someone with AS.
which might have a large part in why the AS wasn't diagnosed for seventeen years after the hearing loss was dx'd.


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14 Feb 2008, 10:43 am

Depend on how autistic they are. You can't always see if someone has AS or HFA unless you know them.


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14 Feb 2008, 12:30 pm

Whisperer wrote:
Damn. . . I'd get labelled as autistic immediately.
I'd assumed it'd be harder to tell. . .

Though, I must say those things tend to come up in me a lot more in public and under stress.


When I met the shrink who diagnosed me, I didn't think I'd be very obvious as I am quite mild. Then she asked me to describe my problem... 8O

Being asked to describe what is wrong we me by a shrink definately comes up there in my Top 5 Stressful Things. But in a way it was good, because all my oddities just came pouring out, completely involuntarily.

In reply to someone elses post, I am neither a geek nor a nerd.



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14 Feb 2008, 12:45 pm

Observing, interacting and looking ...

Then, as a related topic. VVhen somebody says auties and aspies are all the 'same', alike, similar and so on .. Sometimes I think me as an aspie is not that I can compare vvith an autie in all the aspects but less. I mean, from my point of vievv auties persons interact little vvith the people of their evironment because the seem to be quite self-dependent , almost on the things they do. I think a cousin five years younger than me, she may be the autie high functionism kind of type. I appreciatte her very much, but is not that I can feel vve are totally alike for being put in the 'autistic' group. Ok, she speaks little, so do I, she likes to have her alone moments, like I do need, but maybe she needs them more often than me. She has this ingenuety too much high that I also have vve can be very sensible persons, and vve both tend to live somevvhat in our vvorlds. But she has not the clumsy physical movements like I can have( because of the aspiesness), like auties not tend to be clumsy. Our faces are somevvhat alvvays like ine*pressive ich is similar in both of us, and different form neurotypicals. But other difference is that vvhen I vvant to socialize I'm more victorious at that because I can shovv more emotions than her to the other people and emphatize vvith them better, but on contrary she can remain stronger and shovv to be more independent of other people's presence hile I can be overboard more easily than hers. That is vvhy I think my cousin still has it better then me in some vvays, but ok is only an opinion because sometimes I noted her she admired the vvay I handled things, (ok, for tastes there are plenty of colors), still I care for her very much, maybe because i can feel some sort of loneliness in the middle of crovvs of people, and that is yes maybe a common 'factor' vvhich tie boths aspies and auties ..