Anyone here take the CAT-Q?

I took the Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire not long ago, and was surprised to find that against the average of 109 for adult males, my average was 149. So I mask considerably more than the average among us. It's given me a lot to think about in terms of how I behave around other people, how I behave around people I trust and am close to, and how I behave when I'm by myself. I'm curious to find out if there are others among us here who have scored similarly high, or higher.

Parents
  • Mine was 135 with compensation 45,  masking 43 and assimilation 47, I've no idea what it all means though, I downloaded the PDF hoping for more information but there wasn't any, how do I find out the meaning of the scores?

  • Hi Cat, have a look at my post below which gives details of what each section refers to.

  • Hi Pixie, I did see your post before I posted, but I still don't understand what any of it means, as there's nothing to measure it against, theres no context.  Without context this is about as useful as a Cosmopolitan magazine quiz.

  • Ha ha Slight smile

    No, it means you camouflage in the same way as most other autistic women, when you are in social situations.

    My masking score was wildly different - I think my brain spends so much time doing the compensating thing of learned facial expressions, body language & responding appropriately to social cues that I have no processing space left to think about looking confident or attentive or whether I'm doing eye contact. Sometimes if I'm not engrossed in a conversation or lose the ability to concentrate on the speaker my mind starts wandering and thinking of something else or I start thinking about my eye contact - for example, have I been staring at them too long? - and then I miss a lot of what was said. 

    I have noticed that my partner and I can have long conversations without any eye contact at all.

Reply
  • Ha ha Slight smile

    No, it means you camouflage in the same way as most other autistic women, when you are in social situations.

    My masking score was wildly different - I think my brain spends so much time doing the compensating thing of learned facial expressions, body language & responding appropriately to social cues that I have no processing space left to think about looking confident or attentive or whether I'm doing eye contact. Sometimes if I'm not engrossed in a conversation or lose the ability to concentrate on the speaker my mind starts wandering and thinking of something else or I start thinking about my eye contact - for example, have I been staring at them too long? - and then I miss a lot of what was said. 

    I have noticed that my partner and I can have long conversations without any eye contact at all.

Children
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