ADOS mod 4 picture book

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Yeah it's like 15 pages or so. The impaired executive functioning really jumps out especially compared to the cognitive abilities. The diagnosis actually makes me feel normal for a change

Good point about help for adults, I hadn't really thought of that much. I just keep wondering how many kids out there are like I was, full of potential but not getting the simple help they need. I guess I see it more naturally, but adults are definitely the more underserved population these days for sure.

Yep! Congratulations.

I did the ADOS today, as part of a long series of diagnostic appointments.

A while after I came home, I did some Googling, and I discovered that the picture book is actually a rather well-known children's book -- not as famous as, say, the Dr. Seuss books, but still, apparently, a book that many people will have seen before.

It surprises me that the ADOS would use such a well-known book, which will have already been seen by many people but not by everyone. It surprises me even more that I was NOT asked whether or not I had seen the book before.

Surely people's responses to the book would be influenced significantly by whether they had seen it before? I, in particular, had NOT seen it before, and thus made a few dumb mistakes in my interpretation of the book, which I would not have made had I seen it before.

I can only guess that what we're being judged on, primarily, is NOT our interpretation of the book but rather how we interact with the assessor when talking about it. But even that -- for me at least -- would be substantially affected by whether I'd seen the book before or not. My behavior is very different when I'm trying to figure something out vs. when I'm trying to explain something I'm already familiar with and comfortable with.

Is that the one with the frogs and the fire?

I did a decent job at narrating the flying frog story and creating a story with the objects but when it came to conversing I had a one sided conversation and I didn't do well with the word associations. There was an exercise interpreting the emotions of pairs of eyes and I have no idea how I did on that exercise.

I too did the flying frogs picture book, and mostly described what was on each page. I'm not sure how else one could narrate that particular book though. Maybe NT's don't include as much detail? Or maybe they come up with motivations for the flying frogs? (Not sure how they're frogs that are flying and have the same frog stare on every page)

I had the ADOS last week; the only tasks I had were a puzzle, the book, describing a picture, miming a cup of tea and telling the story with 5 objects (which I abstained from because I was just getting a complete blank). The rest was questions (describing emotions and relationships etc). I can see now the assessor was trying to get me to have a back and forth conversation, particularly by trying to get me to talk with him about a shared interest we had, but at the time I didn't pick up on it (which is quite typical for me, to figure it out later). I pretty much just answered his questions like an interview.

Did not like the picture book task precisely because I had absolutely no idea what he wanted from me. The pictures on each page felt like a chaotic sea of details and I had mostly no idea what was going on. I ended up picking out a few details as best I could. I looked up a bit about what they score with the ADOS, although what's online is quite sparse because they are obviously keen to keep it a secret, and it occurs to me now probably a lot of the aspects were about how you interacted with the assessor more than what you described the book. Like how you dealt with turn taking etc (which was how my assessor did it, with him doing a few pages and then me doing the next few).

The one with the frogs. I don't remember a fire.

I made at least the following dumb mistakes that I would NOT have made had I already been familiar with this apparently rather famous book:

[spoiler alert]

1) When the frogs first started flying, I thought they had been blown up into the air by a gust of wind or something, before I realized, a page or two later, that this was a fantasy story about levitating frogs, not an attempt to portray anything natural.

2) I did not grasp, at all, the meaning of a page that I now realize was intended to portray the local police investigating reports of flying frogs.

I think there were some frogs in a burning house. One of the frogs was sitting in his living room. I was asked sort of a "common sense" question related to how to inform the frog that the house was on fire.

Or....I could be combining two stories.

Either you were shown a different story, or you're combining two separate stories.

I know there were frogs. And I know there was a burning house.

Oh well.....that's the way the ball bounces....

I remember the examiner remarking about my use of "All Quiet on the Western Front" to mean "a state of homeostasis."