| ▲ | alexfoo 15 hours ago | |
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). | ||
| ▲ | jon-wood 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | |
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. | ||
| ▲ | dashdashu 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |
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. | ||
| ▲ | datadrivenangel 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | |
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. | ||