Published on 12, July, 2020
Over the past week or so I've read quite a few details in different threads about what happens at an ADOS appointment on this forum (I include myself in that by the way as I've mentioned some things mentioned in my report that I found surprising and a "difficult read").
I've heard it said in the past that, whilst there is no explicit "secrecy" around ADOS and I certainly wasn't asked kindly not to discuss mine, that "they" don't like details being published - and I think there are good (for us) reasons for this. I think that if I had known in advance *exactly* what would happen and, more critically, *why*, then this would have created the risk that I would mask more (consciously or subconsciously) out of a desire to "do the right (i.e. NT) thing" and/or this would have led me to rehearse my behaviour beforehand and/or doubt the objectivity of the result (i.e. reflecting afterwards was I masking? Was I trying to display the autistic signs I had decided that I have?).
This would have led to more doubt about whether I had been diagnosed objectively via a gold standard test, and the little monster that says "there's nothing wrong with you & you're faking it" would have been bigger and louder.
As it was, because I knew very little about the specifics when I went for mine, I can look at my report and say "Yep, I didn't know they were looking for *that*, *then*, and my behaviour was 100% spontaneous and neither embellished nor masked, and it's 100% me".
What do you think? My leaning is that we should exercise caution in posting too many details here. Generalities of course are fine, but I think that discussing the specifics of the exercises and the reasons they exist entails the risks above.
This is an interesting point. I didn’t know what to expect from the appointment when I went to it. And was confused by some of the things I was asked to do. From reading a few posts on this forum it seems like it can be quite helpful for some people to know more around the assessment. There seems to be quite big differences in the feedback people are getting after their assessment. I only got brief feedback on the ADOS assessment, which was mainly a few lines in my report. But reading other people’s experiences where they’ve been told what the assessor had looked for, and told them how someone without autism would have approached a task or reacted, has been helpful for me.
I still don’t understand the teeth brushing. But I know what they were looking for when asking you to do a story with the objects, and that’s been helpful and interesting for me because now I understand why as a kid I used to get so angry if people tried to join my ‘games’ or tries to play pretend stuff.
Apparently, the tooth brushing task is to observe how you use, or don't use, gesture in combination with words.
Gosh, I used what I thought were natural and appropriate gestures plus explained step by step and succinctly, I think. I wonder what the "tells" were.