I’ve had this question in my brain for weeks and I don’t know where to put it. I guess I chose here because maybe someone else has had this same question and found answers. Maybe it’s a stupid question actually.

But what is it like to be Neurotypical?

I am not confident I have known a single Neurotypical person, at least not well. They are apparently the vast majority of people, but I think everyone I’ve ever been close to was ND. As a late diagnosed AuDHD person, I find myself now analyzing every human I interact with trying to figure out how they are different than me, or how they are similar. I feel like I see the ghost of Neurodivergence in everyone and can’t recognize neurotypicality when I see it.

What are the signs and symptoms of neurotypicality?

  • @zarmantoEnglish
    6•1 year ago

    I can’t really say from personal experience – mostly because I’m quite certain that I would offend someone in-so-doing – but I have an idea that might offer some insights:

    There’s a link in the right hand sidebar of this community to helpful resources; from there is a link to Autism tests. Click on the AQ-10 test, and take it. After you finish, look back over your answers, see if you can guess which questions would have made your score lower, and change those answers accordingly. Play around with it a bit, and maybe even think of it as a game. If you get your score down to zero… that’s roughly how the most “neurotypical” person would have answered. That’s not to say that all NTs will answer that way, but it gives you an idea of the traits that suggest neurotypicality, with the opposing answer obviously suggesting neurodivergent traits. Analytically, this also means that the more strongly you gravitate towards the ND trait answers, the less “typical” is your natural behavior.

    You could also do this with the 50 question version of the test, but I imagine that would take a lot more time and effort with a much more limited return on investment, as compared to just doing the 10… but even as I’m writing this, I’m finding myself tempted to go do it anyway. That’s probably one of the ND traits in me.

    (Alternatively, if you’re familiar with the structure of HTML, you can easily figure out all of the answers from the page source.)