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- Hacker News
- > At the end, she told me she would review my exam and have the results ready in a few days.
Yeah man I can go ahead and let you know early if you want.
by a2dam - This comment is so funny to me, because I imagine you being distracted to make the comment before making it to the end where the psych did indeed review the new results.
Well I only know that because I skipped to the end. Then, while scrolling up I realised I missed the whole side-quest about promising to not cheat the test again, taking the test again, but then "accidentally" finding an exploit the system, and then cheating the test again, but this time cheating even more to see the results.
Then, scrolling up more I see that this whole thing started with seeing stars and then buying a telescope on amazon (probably at 3am).
And here I am commenting on HN instead of replying to an email...
by johnwalkr - I know this is a joke, but I'd be careful about assuming: I had a trained therapist diagnose me with ADHD ... incorrectly.
It turns out, there are other conditions out there that can appear to be be ADHD. If a trained therapist can confuse them, outside observers certainly can too, so it is possible that "very ADHD-acting" person you know might not have it.
(Or, especially for females, the reverse can be true, as not everyone with ADHD manifests with the same trademark hyperactivity.)
by hungryhobbit - I did a similar test and it came back neurotypical.
Given the overlap between ADHD and video games, I'm not convinced of the accuracy. It felt like a lame rhythm minigame to me.
I don't think the research is solid, my guess is these tests are convenient for insurance and liability paperwork since stimulants are controlled substances.
by randusername - Reminds me of one of the first video games to get FDA approval as a medical device. EndeavorRx I believe it's called. You have to keep the character moving down the path while not paying attention to all the shit the game produces to distract you.by bitwize
- hi! author here, please let me know if you have any questions :-)by nullpt_rs
- Have you got some fancy scroll thing for your blog? Something in my brain is noticing that scrolling feels smoother than your average site, though maybe im crazy.by agentdev001
- Following through on the top comment, surely you realized when you decided to forgo the back half of the test that, had the program compensated for it, you were consciously leaning into the ADHD diagnosis, right?by BearOso
- Would you mind sharing the test platform?by mrbenjihao
- I have a question (and please take it in jest)! In between buying a telescope, seeking out an opinion on ADHD, accidentally hacking an online test, and then blogging about it, how many things on your todo list(s) did you not do?by johnwalkr
- No questions, but feedback for you from an engineer in a similar situation (late diagnosis), make sure you go back and get them to check for every other thing under the sun. You really don't want to dive into the ADHD side and find out it was something else (other things can masquerade as ADHD), so a good neuropsychologist is critical. And "body medicine", too, for example adrenal disorders. It's worth being extremely thorough at this point - you're off the standard path, embrace it.
Also, congratulations, once you figure it out your life is going to change for the better in a way you can't currently understand (literally, lacking the brain regions and/or development for it, take it from me), but the process can kinda suck a lot, so stick with it, it's worth it in the end, wherever you end up.
by jaggederest - I took a similar test but in person at an office a few years ago. Exact same layout, of "click when x appears, do nothing if not". It was only 25 minutes I believe but felt like an eternity. I had a 100% success rate and above average reaction speed, but I still "failed" because of my observed behavior as I was taking the test.
The proctor noted my restless legs, frequent posture shifts, and "tendancy to tap the table when not responding to the stimuli" (this was a strategy I had come up with to create something to do in response to "doing nothing", as it made a sort of rhythm that gave me something to do). I then realized that the test meant very little, but the proctor was watching and diagnosing me durng the test.
by yuck39 - I was researching this test yesterday for my own appointment and did not expect to see it on hacker news.
I am having a really difficult time finding a reputable psychiatrist to assess adult ADHD. I called 15 places and only heard back from one. I scheduled an appointment. They had 1/5 stars, gave me a 30 year old 1 page questionnaire, and asked to see my childhood report card. I did not see them again.
Yesterday I got a callback from an office offering this online test but nothing else? It all smells fishy.
Did anyone have to cross state lines to find a reputable psychiatrist?
by kalinkochnev - > It all smells fishy
Because for some, an "ADHD" is like playing up a symptom to get "Medical Marijuana." It makes it hard to differentiate between people who have a legitimate need for treatment, and people who just want uppers. (There's a joke that if you want a prescription, just look for a 1-star doctor and make sure to accept the vaccinations so they can bill for more.)
Have you asked your general practitioner for help finding a psychiatrist?
by gwbas1c - I used my general physician. It may not be as high quality as a psych, but he determined the symptoms correlated with the diagnosis and the medicine has helped me immensely in my life.
- My psychiatrist gave me some questionnaires (BECK Depression Inventory, THE BECK Anxiety Inventory) and gave me an IQ test (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale), she noted in her report the fact that I had a tendency to be restless, that I was distracted by the sound of the clock in her office ticking and that the IQ test scores were very lopsided with Processing Speed being much lower than everything else (and slightly lower working memory). Total test took 8 hours. I had abysmal results on the (Picture Completion) subtest.by sersi
- I found myself trying to come up with a system that used the position of my hands to “solve” the problem for me.
But then I worried if my system worked, I would be misdiagnosed.
It didn’t work. I was 98th percentile.
Thanks for sharing this!
by _fw - this sounds interesting! would love to hear more about thisby nullpt_rs
- I took a similar ADHD test. It seemed so easy and simple that I always wondered how it was actually supposed to catch me.
Good to know that neurotypical people mostly likely test differently than I did.
by izzylan - This was part of how my ADHD was diagnosed. I did a full day of testing at a specialist center. First I had a conversation with a nurse, then a psychologist, then they had me do a similar test (but in a controlled environment and I also had face tracking and a motion sensor monitoring my movement). After the test, I was given lunch and a dose of adhd medication and about an hour break, then they had me do the test again. After that I met with a psychiatrist who walked me through the test results. Then I had another break while the three specialists met to discuss my case and make a diagnosis. Finally I met with the three to hear the outcome (I was also given a full write-up of my results from the day).
My one surprise from this article is that "play a web game for 18 minutes" in an uncontrolled environment was considered enough testing for a diagnosis!
- So they got so bered in ADHD test that they hacked the whole website administering the test. They are truly one of us.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=W99n083E0IA&pp=ygUeZnJlYWtzIGd...
- Yep, I was thinking that the results of the report might as well be irrelevantby plaguuuuuu
- I sat a similar test at the start of my ADHD diagnosis (in the UK for reference).
The one I did (QbCheck) was a similar setup but you were presented with shapes on the screen, either a square or a circle, and either blue or red. All you had to do was press the spacebar when the shape on the screen was the same shape and colour as the previous one. No sound distracitons (or maybe I just had the volume muted.)
You also had to do the test on a laptop with a forward facing camera so the software could track eye movement.
I remember starting the test and thinking "This is exactly what my brain is wired for, I'm going to be awesome at this test!"
Within a minute my mind had already moved on to "I wonder how they score this test? I guess they're looking at accuracy, reaction times, how those trend over time, whether the accuracy/reactions goes up/down if they show the same shape/colour more than twice in a row?" etc...
It didn't take long for me to then get jolted into a "wait, did I just zone out a bit there and miss one?"
Then I became overly conscious of my eyes wandering around and not looking at the screen.
Then my mind moved on to "what if I'm too good at this and it means I won't get a diagnosis?"
Soon it was "When will this ever end? This must have been going on for ages!" only to find it had only been about 3 minutes.
The test took 20 minutes or so and I was mentally exhausted by the end of it.
My actual ADHD diagnosis was backed up by an 80 minute interview, basically doing the DSM-5 questions but linking it all back to childhood experiences too. I've no idea how much weight the QbCheck test had.
Glad I got the diagnosis, I've been masking both for years (diagnosed in my late 40s) but just got burnt out doing so. Medication helps but isn't perfect and since I'm probably AuDHD I find the ADHD medication amplifies some of the Autism traits and makes me into a bit of an emotional zombie, but that seems to be better than having zero motivation (aside from stress/deadlines and serious consequences).
by alexfoo - The 20 minutes was one of the longest and hardest 20 minutes of my life. The worst.
Did confirm that I have very above average reaction times though.
- I feel your thoughts about "what if I'm too good at this and it means I wont get diagnosed?" and "when will this ever end?" one, felt like forever - the time blindness struggle is real. I still thought I did too well until the end where they showed me.. well I missed a lot of those little dots in the quadrants or whatever it was.by dashdashu
- The first time I went for a diagnosis I was made to sit the same QbCheck test, which was then used as the entire justification for why I couldn't possibly have ADHD despite every other aspect saying I did. Apparently 30 years of having to sit at a computer and do a task in order to eat and pay rent means that I can sit down for 20 minutes and do a task at a computer.
I'm still quite bitter about this because it then took me another two years to work up the motivation to go get retested (this time somewhere that doesn't use snake oil), followed by an additional year to work up the motivation to sort out coordinating with my GP to get on meds. That's three years I could have been a functioning human being.
by jon-wood - I spent a decent amount working on ADHD diagnostics and unfortunately it sucks. To my knowledge, to this day, there isn’t a single reliable biomarker that identifies autism spectrum disorders. It’s usually correlation studies paired with questionnaires which for lack of better words can be described as “incidental” at best. Most z scored tests I know are also developed with small samples, a hundred participants with an outgroup of 20 would already be a LARGE sample. The standard ADHD questionnaire was validated on some 35 people.
There might be some hope in deep learning, particularly in observing eye movement components to deliver reliable biomarkers in the future, but I’m not so confident any time soon.
It’s dreadful and fascinating at the same time that defining and testing for ADS has been so elusive for so long…
- Isn't this true of nearly all mental disorders in DSM-5 and ICD-11?
We don't really know what mental disorders are and so we don't have objective diagnostic tests for them. [1]
We just have treatments that sometimes work for some people (and with the replication crisis[2] that sometimes is probably a lower value than expected).
by Brybry - ADHD is not an autism spectrum disorder, is it?by anamexis
- 32 y/o male. I took an in-person assessment earlier this year. It was an 8 hour battery of tests split across two days. In no particular order:
- Clinical Interview
- Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale – Fourth Edition (WAIS-IV)
- Wechsler Memory Scale – Fourth Edition (WMS-IV)
- Conners Continuous Performance Test – Third Edition (CPT-3)
- Delis-Kaplan Executive Functioning System, selected subtests
- Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST)
Are you familiar with any of those? I did some research after receiving my report and apparently the combination of tests listed above are well-respected, about as good as it gets. I’m curious what your take is.
The subjective part of the assessment was actually the clinician making sense of the data. My cognitive assessment (IQ and its subtypes) scored fairly high, I averaged something like 115 (84th percentile). But my memory assessment scores (audio/visual memory/working memory, immediate/delayed memory) tanked tremendously, I averaged around 90 (30th percentile).
My positive diagnosis was based on the variability of scores and the clear cognition-memory gap. The results made sense, aligned with my experience in life (I fell asleep in almost every lecture in college, sustaining attention while taking notes was a heavy audio-visual working memory exercise for me).
I personally haven’t adopted any of this as my identity but it opened a door to do some metacognition and reflect on how I interface with the world. Also the stimulant medication didn’t magically fix everything, sometimes the hyper focus is worse, but there was one HUGE benefit that I didn’t realize I was missing - emotional regulation. I’m a heavy ruminator and pretty much suffered in silence most of my life, my inner dialog is much more organized and calm, and I can comb through my thoughts easier now.
P.S. I cannot recommend enough - check out “HealthyGamerGG” on YouTube. He does some deep dives on ADHD and other diagnoses. Classically trained psychiatrist with something like 5 years of training as a Buddhist monk. Very insightful guy who’s both data-driven and spiritual, helping a lot of people.
by sedivy94