"Play a game of sorts" doesn't sound either systematic or predictive. Are they referring both parents to clinicians to check if the prediction from their "game" was correct, or just using it for water cooler fodder?
I, as a non-professional in the field, have no business diagnosing anybody based on casual interactions.
If I am at a party and I tell my friends “that weird person I just met is pretty autistic,” I am not diagnosing them, I am just saying something speculative behind their back.
>I, as a non-professional in the field, have no business diagnosing anybody based on casual interactions.
That's fine, because professionals don't diagnose people officially based on "casual interactions" either, nor they do that at parties.
They have systematic scripts to go through and structured interactions. That's because diagnosing is official business and must have a higher standard plus tests and paperwork to cover your ass.
Ignoring that, whether a professional or not, if you know what to look for, it's pretty easy to tell if someone is autistic by talking to them at a social context, with way better than chance accuracy (meaning aspie autistic - for asd 2 or 3 it's way more self-evident than that even).
More often than not, the subjects reveal their diagnoses themselves at a later point.
If you have guessed correctly from before the reveal for many different individuals, you can pat yourself on the back.
For those that don't reveal or might not even have a diagnosis or be aware they could be, a pile up of additional (unrelated to the initial impression) diagnostically consistent behaviors and mannerisms as you get to know them over time is also a good enough confirmation for use outside of a clinical setting.
In general, even the average non-trained or unfamiliar with the specific traits neurotypical person is good at this identification even subconsciously, they just don't know what exactly they're identifying (so pit it as "weird", "offputting" etc):
(...) across three studies, we find that first impressions of individuals with ASD made from thin slices of real-world social behavior by typically-developing observers are not only far less favorable across a range of trait judgments compared to controls, but also are associated with reduced intentions to pursue social interaction. These patterns are remarkably robust, occur within seconds, do not change with increased exposure, and persist across both child and adult age groups
"… a static image was sufficient for generating negative first impressions of those with ASD. (...) In contrast, first impressions of TD [typically developing] controls improved with the addition of a visual information, suggesting that unlike the ASD group, visual cues helped rather than hurt the impressions they made on observers."
I can look at a politician or a CEO or just someone I encounter in life and see autism (or not), narcissism, sociopathy or any number of other conditions. Is this a diagnosis? No. But it's part of my mental model for dealing with such people. I'm not sure why you played the faux offense card at people making casual observations.
It's also clear to anyone who pays attention that there is a genetic link with autism and it doesn't take much to see it.
More deeply, you rcomment reads as a typical neurotypical response (or possibly internalized ableism from someone who isn't diagnozed but probably should be). There is a real safety issue here because autistic people can spot the neurotypical vs neurodivergent difference pretty darn quickly and have come to realize that neurotypical people are a real threat, particularly in the job market.
And if you still don't think neurodivergent people can spot neurotypical people, what about the reaction autistic people get from allistic people? Allistic people tend to instinctively dislike, distrust or even bully autistic people from the moment they meet them. They create conditions where autistic people have a harder time in the workplace, are less likely to get promoted and more likely to be fired or forced to quit.
You’re making a lot of assumptions, and without going into detail, you couldn’t be farther off about my personal experience.
The point of TFA is that the mild/borderline diagnosis rate has exploded. So apparently those professionally tasked with diagnosis now see autism where they used to not see it. But now we have self-styled autism spotters out there labeling people definitively based on tweets.
Even in your response you said my response was neurotypical, OR undiagnosed atypical. You don’t see the irony?
Ok, so you're a "autism is overdiagnosed" Andy, in your own words. That likely puts you in the NT camp so you should probably sit this one out as you have absolutely no idea what impact autism has on people's lives.
I don't think I've ever seen someone diagnosed with autism who turned around and said "it's not a big deal". It always, always, always has a profound impact on understanding the trauma and difficulties they've suffered their entire lives.
These are people who once wore labels like "being a nerd" or simply "being introverted" when their brains were wired in such a way as to be at a severe disadvantage in an allistic world. There were answers to why they had few friends in school, were likely bullied, had difficulties getting and keeping jobs and had problems maintaining social relationships. These are people who sought out (or were forced into) jobs where social connections didn't matter (as much). These are people who were told their team in the office was "like a family" but were somehow always excluded and were told they were being difficult for asking qualifying questions on tasks or simply pointing out how something was doomed to failure.
What autistic people learn is that allistic people are dangerous and needy because they demand conformance to unwritten rules, who will talk about rules while ignoring them when convenient, who will talk about consistency while having none of it and will talk about morality while discarding it in a heartbeat.
It is the most allistic trait ever to simply dismiss all this as "overdiagnosis".
Great, diagnosing people based on casual observations. Wasn’t friendly enough, not great eye contact, said something odd…must be autism.
Our tolerance for weirdos of all kinds seems to have gone both down and up at the same time. Why can’t they just be people who are a little unusual?