Doctor shares test he uses to help see if patients might be autistic
A doctor specialising in autism has created a quick facial recognition test which he says can give people a clue over whether or not they might be autistic.
New York psychologist Dr George Sachs specialises in treating ADD/ADHD and people of all ages on the autistic spectrum, and has taken to TikTok with a test he has for people who are wondering if they may have autism.
The test - which does not give an official diagnosis of autism - runs through a series of pictures of a woman pulling various facial expressions and two options for what state of mind she's in judging by her face.
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People are asked to judge whether the woman is surprise or happy in one picture, then afraid or angry in the next.
It runs though 20 different facial expressions but the same potential reasons behind the expressions keep cropping up and the second half of the test gets more complicated.
It starts off with asking you whether someone's surprised or happy, and then angry or afraid, before asking people to judge whether the woman in the picture is sad or distressed (she kind of looks both, if I'm being honest).
Dr Sachs' test then announces that it's going to get a bit more difficult as it throws a whole load of other potential answers into the mix.
As the woman adopts a smug expression on her face you've got to figure out if she's arrogant or scheming, and then a new image challenges you to determine whether the face is one of guilt or arrogance.
The 'arrogant' theme continues onto the next question as we're asked to judge whether the woman is that or thoughtful.
From there it's a flurry of new expressions to decipher including telling the difference between surprise and admiration, happiness and flirting and being interested or disinterested.
The doc stressed that your performance on this test wasn't a guaranteed way to tell if you were autistic, but it might help point you in the right direction.
He wrote: "This test alone does not mean you have autism.
"But if you got many wrong in stage two, it could be a clue that you might have autism."
People taking the test discussed their results and pointed out some parts they thought might have been quite confusing, including Dr Sachs throwing in the same correct answer twice in a row to throw people off.
One person joked 'my autism is cured' after saying they got most of the answers right, while another said the real test was staying with it until the end which would be 'proof you are extremely patient'.
Others wondered whether they'd have got the right answer if they hadn't had two options to pick from and just had to judge it based off the picture alone.
Joe Harker