Your functioing level

Post Reply New Topic

That is a good suggestion. I should try this again and take into consideration how those would assess me who know me rather well. Thank you!

Employment:
-> Hmm, I'm not a hard-working employee. I don't work in my area of interest either. Eventually, I would be at 50th, I think.

Family (Does not apply to those who don't want to marry):
-> I have romantic relationships since the age of 36. Before that, none. Suppose I'll be able sustain a relationship with children, than I'll be 25th. Now I'm somewhere between 5th and 25th.

Self-care:
-> I'm 75th, except for cleaning. When it comes to it, I'm rather lazy. My (suspected) HFA friend and my parents help me with it.

Education (Assuming it is desired):
-> I have Master's degree (75th), I consider myself lucky.

Friendships & Social Skills:
-> I gradually went from 25th to near 50th during my adult life.

Meltdowns:
-> I would chose 50th, but with "embarrassing himself in public".

Executive Functioning:
-> 75th, but with "tends to lose track of time". I would add "tends to lose motivation" too.

Speech/Language:
-> 50th. My speech is definitely odd at first hearing. Besides, I tend to stutter, stammer, have bad infliction, articulation etc.

Sensory:
-> 75th, although I have some really annoying problems with it, I don't think they are severe.

Employment: 50th percentile
Family: 50th percentile
Self-care: 75th percentile
Education: 50th percentile
Friendships & Social Skills: 25th percentile
Meltdowns: 25th percentile
Executive Functioning: 95th percentile
Speech/Language: 50th percentile
Sensory: 50th percentile

Employment: 95th. Hell, I am at my best when I am working. I am not a climber though, I'd be happy to work only and not give half a hoot about promotion or professional growth.

Family: 50th. I have a wonderful husband (well, as wonderful as they come, and he is pretty weird himself) and he is solely responsible for all the forgiving and forgetting and all the compromise in the family. If I had my way, I'd have left long ago, I do need lots of alone time and I can't seem to handle disagreements, even minor ones. I have limited contact with the rest of my family.

Self care: 95th and more. I have always been very independent, even when I was a child.

Education: 95th; PhD degree in science, decent publication activity.

Friends: 25th. A couple of friends who are almost as weird as me. I don't like to communicate with NTs much though I can handle it occasionally and in small doses.

Meltdowns: 75th. I usually withdraw when I feel that things get a bit too much for me. Typically I will go into meltdown only if can't withdraw or even later, whene there is no danger of making a public display of myself.

Executive functioning: 75th-50th. I do have issues with transitions and uncertainty. I have learned how to drag myself through everyday challenges though. I have motivation issues that are concentrated solely around initiating new things, once I get to work on something, it is a bulldog grip.

Speech: 75th-95th. I usually can manage prosody and tone of voice sufficiently well. I am formal though and sometimes I may talk too fast for anyone to understand, or use too much professional terms.

Sensory: 50th. Severe issues with loud noise and sounds (can't stand TV or radio unless it is almost muted), moderate with clothing, mild with lighting and food texture, resulting in a limited diet. Clumsy and therefore very accident-prone as I might not feel pain for some time after the injury. I manage fairly well though, considering.

Last edited by Severus on 24 Jul 2011, 6:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It'd be interesting to get Callista involved in trying to see what the percentages of our percentages equal.

Employment: 25th
(I'm actually in between 25th - 5th, but I didn't want to mess up the calculations by saying I was 15th!)

Family (Does not apply to those who don't want to marry): 50th-25th
(I'm in a stable relationship, but the stability is mainly due to my BF. I'm the one who keeps trying to break us up when things go wrong! Also need huge amounts of alone time. Just been with BF for 5 straight days and I'm out of my head!)

Self-care: 50th-25th
(Again, I live alone, and cope, but tend to freak if something changes my routine, and definately need help with utilities)

Education (Assuming it is desired): 50th
(This is in USA-speak. Is college in the USA the equivilent of university in the UK?)

Friendships & Social Skills: 75th
(Have massive problems with being misinterpreted, though)

Meltdowns: 75th-50th
(Seem to be getting more common for me, actually)

Executive Functioning: 50th

Speech/Language: 75th

Sensory: 50th
(Sound is my demon. I hear everything!)

Depression: 25th

Stimming: 50th

Oh dear... I just wrote down the spectrum of expression of various traits I had seen among the population of autistics I've met, read about, and talked to... I didn't expect that people would take it as the gospel truth. The percentiles are really no more than an estimate--they're not based on formal research at all.

Employment - 5th
Family - 25th
Self-Care - 75th
Education - 50th
Friendships & Social Skills - 25th
Meltdowns - 50th
Executive Functioning - 50th
Speech/Language - 50th
Sensory - 50th

I'm only putting the areas that apply in my life ATM


Self-care:
25th percentile: Does all own basic self-care; lives with family or roommates. May not be able to drive. Needs occasional help with things like shopping, paying bills, cleaning the house.

Education:
25th percentile: High school graduate or GED; probably needed special education and/or an aide in school. May go to trade school or go for a professional certificate. Probably has learning disabilities.

Friendships & Social Skills:
75th percentile: Some friends; many acquaintances. Can effectively communicate with NTs and is not thought of as threatening, though may be perceived as eccentric or quirky. Proficient in social skills, but only with a good amount of effort. Will likely be exhausted after a few hours of socializing.

Meltdowns:
50th percentile: Meltdowns/shutdowns are common, but do not endanger anyone. Able to predict/prevent them to a good extent and only rarely has a meltdown/shutdown in public.


Executive Functioning:
75th percentile: Has problems with concentration/planning and transitions, and has compensatory systems that work most of the time. May be thrown off by new schedules or unexpected events.

Speech/Language:
95th percentile: Able to speak whenever they desire. Has learned casual speech; has learned to use tone of voice. Able to change vocabulary and style to suit the audience they are speaking to.

Sensory:
65th percentile: Sensory issues are definite and cause problems, some of which are difficult to solve. Probably has issues with things like TV monitors, seams in clothing, texture of food. Takes active steps to adjust the sensory environment to reduce stress level, but is not always successful. May be unusually vulnerable to injury because of undersensitivity.

Not it's really aimed at adult autistics, so younger autistics like me (18) will naturally come off as lower! Same!

Yeah, I kinda figured that.

I didn't take it as gospel truth, but comparing myself to your observations was interesting to me, because it is difficult for me to look at my own abilities and judge where I am. I don't know how severe my difficulties are, but when I describe them or others observe them they tell me that I have more severe difficulties than I think I do. Most of my awareness of this comes from what others have said to me.

In that context, I found your observations valuable for comparison. I don't recall seeing a similar set of observations put down anywhere else.

Currently

Employment: 50-75
Family: DNA
Self-care: 25
Note : I'm currently a student so it's still is normal for me to be living with my parents. I'll go live on my own when I'll start my master degree.
Education: 50-75
Friendships & Social Skills: 50
I'm very good at the basic social manners so I always look very normal at first. I don't socialize that much though but I'm getting a lot better since I had a relationship not long ago. Having a relationship got me rid of 80% of my insecurities and fear from talking and socializing with strangers.
Meltdowns: 25-50
I get meltdowns if I do too many new things, go to a bar or be with people who take drugs. My head gets full of negative thoughts, I can't reason correctly and I'm irritable so I look like a girl who's having her PMS . I'm generally not mean with people but you can see that I'm super frustrated and I might go away saying that I'm not feeling well.
Executive Functioning: 50-75
It got a LOT better since I started university! At first university was making me feel horrible because I couldn't be as good as others and the new courses/scheldule was really hard to adapt to but after 3 years of study I'm getting the hang of it. I ALWAYS get much better at the end of each semester simply because I become more adapted and I have my own routine.
Speech/Language: 75
My speech is not robotic or too formal most of the time BUT I may lose my ability to speak (selective mutism or almost) when in stress or in a room full of new people.
Sensory: 25-50


Future Prediction (After finishing university completly)

Employment: 95
Family: DNA
Self-care: 50
Education: 95
Friendships & Social Skills: 75
Meltdowns: 25-50
Executive Functioning: 75-95
Speech/Language: 75-95
Sensory: 25-50

Good, good, just so everyone knows it's just an estimate based on observation rather than a statistical study. Had to make sure of that. I'm glad it's helpful. My main point, of course, was just how diverse the spectrum is and how much of a wide range of skills there are. You can see in this thread that there are quite a few people who are at both the 5th and 95th percentile, or at least 25th and 75th simultaneously. That really matches up with what we've been saying for ages about how global functioning labels really have very little meaning. And of course each of these broad categories has sub-categories too, so I bet there are probably people who are at the 5th and 95th simultaneously on two subskills of one category.

Yeah I didn't take the percentiles to mean much of anything really, except that they are numbers and numbers are always good starting point. What you say about 'global functioning' is correct, a few people put their 'mean' from all the 'percentile' categories down... that number doesn't really make much sense to me because to me each of the categories really would probably be weighted differently. Plus I think the weights for each category could be different depending on your environment, etc. For example, for someone where friendship is not necessarily desired the friendship category might not really need to be weighed in as much in a 'total' score as compared to other categories... just a thought. I just don't understand how one number could represent everything (same goes for IQ)... this is why I don't really take quizzes.

Anyway, even if the numbers are meaningless the descriptions seem to be a useful tool for evaluating oneself.

With speech, I can rate individual factors anywhere from 75 to 25 easily. It's all over the place. This was true to some extent in at least a couple of other categories as well, but I tended to pick the lowest/most likely to impact my functioning in each case. I tend to speak at a 75 (I think), but I seem to lose access to speech or at least large chunks of speech on a somewhat regular basis.