Monotropism

Monotropism Questionnaire Online

Fergus Murray

We shared a presentation about the Monotropism Questionnaire (MQ) around this time last year. Since then, work has been ongoing on a journal article writing up the results. This is still awaiting peer-review, but is now available on the OSF pre-print server along with the questionnaire itself (see below) which has been made available under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA licence.

A self-scoring version of the MQ was made by developer David Cary after he heard about it from a TikTok video with more than half a million views (which came after Dr. Joey Lawrence posted one which has 1.8 million views at the time of writing). David made his MQ page under his own initiative, but has made some changes in response to feedback from myself and others. Most of the comments on these videos have been very positive, with a lot of people saying how clear and relatable the questions are, compared with autism tests they’ve done; a few have been surprised by their low scores, though, and that warrants further research.

Dr. Joey, a clinical psychologist in Australia, said “I believe this is probably the best assessment of autism” – high praise, but misleading; the MQ is really not an autism assessment as such. The questionnaire is designed to assess a person’s degree of monotropism, and while Monotropism was developed as a theory of autism, it is too early to say whether all autistic people are monotropic, or whether all monotropic people are autistic. It is also not entirely clear how ADHD fits into this picture.

I made a TikTok video about all this (now also on Instagram):

What we know so far is that (to the extent that the MQ is really measuring monotropism) autistic people and ADHDers tend to be significantly more monotropic than the average person. It is also fair to say that no other theory of autism provides a more comprehensive account of autistic differences, and that the theory of Monotropism has helped a great many autistic people to make more sense of their own experiences.

There is still a great deal of research to be done looking at how to apply the MQ in practice, and the questionnaire itself deserves further testing and refinement to ensure that it is not slanted too much towards particular ways of experiencing monotropism. Having a measure of monotropism available – even if it is an imperfect one – opens the door to all kinds of interesting studies on it in the future.

In the meantime, it is exciting to see how much these ideas resonate with people. Here are some of the things that have been written in response…

Fergus

12 responses to “Monotropism Questionnaire Online”

  1. Tanya avatar
    Tanya

    I got really interesting results from taking the MQ & that surprised me.
    Especially that I’m more M than over half of the autistic group and almost 100% of the alliatics.

    I plan to take the MQ again when the questions have been rearranged. Hmmm… Looks like I did a good job with my late in life diagnosis.

    To find out, at my age, that I’ve been dealing with a neuro-divergent brain all my life brings a lot of emotional turmoil.

    Oh, well!

    Reply
    1. Fergus avatar
      Fergus

      I hope this new self-knowledge proves valuable to you! You might like to check out the new ‘I’m Monotropic… Now What?‘ page!

      Reply
  2. Cyanasen Azur avatar
    Cyanasen Azur

    I mean I have ADHD, Autism, and and Trans, so I am not shocked I scored over 94% higher than most hahaha almost perfect score.

    Reply
  3. 2023 Roundup | Fergus Murray

    […] wrote a roundup of recent writing about monotropism – there’s been a lot! I also wrote a piece on the Monotropism Questionnaire after our paper on it went online as a preprint and proved unexpectedly popular. Finally, I added […]

    Reply
  4. The Monotropism Questionnaire – Blue Chula

    […] assessment” called the Monotropism Questionnaire. I watched a few of the videos talking about the Monotropism Questionnaire, like this one from @nd_psych, and my spidey-sense was all of a tingle, so I thought I’d have a […]

    Reply
  5. Aleida Castro avatar
    Aleida Castro

    Hello! I am a late diagnosed autistic woman from Spain. I am also a doctor and I am currently doing my phD in Humanistic Medicina and Accesibility. I scored 189/235. I would like to share my opinion on the test, since I think it can be and interesting tool in diagnosis process, once it gets validated after some proper studies. Some of my responses where not agree or disagree; since a lot of adult women that are late diagnosed suffer from ptsd and complex trauma; also quite exacerbated anxiety. That causes that when we are adults we find harder to engage in hyperfixations or “restricted interests” as we did when we were kids. We tend to live in a high alert mode that causes dificulties in concentration; including topics that we are interested in. Also we tend to have high rates of disociasion and maladaotative dreaming as a resourse of managing our anxiety
    Also; in most level 1 autistic womens there is a gender bias that I think is not been acknowledge in the questionarie. We are rise as primary care figures; most of the times we have been carers of younger siblings; a second hand of our mothers or we have felt broken or guilty if we dont fit into the “female alike behaviour” expected from us. That means that we have learn to dismiss our interests; likes or hobbies. And by adult age we tend to be highly burn out and living in survive mode since we are responsible of our jobs; families and housework (if we live independents lifes).
    That said I think the questionary is too generic and can lead to a lot of false positives or false negatives if those matters are not acknowledge. Also academics resourses, socioeconomics and sociodemographics data are not included; so the results can be bias or not; and that can be key in the matter also.

    Sorry for my mistakes. English is not my first language. I hope my comment can help to continue developing the questionary and the theory.

    Have a nice day!!!

    Reply
    1. Fergus avatar
      Fergus

      Hi Aleida, thanks for your notes! I agree that these are all factors that should be taken into account in the next iteration of the MQ. It may be that not all of them make a difference, but they easily might…

      Reply
  6. On Autism – Fergus Murray

    […] about it since 2018, and working on an archive of her work since 2022. I also helped to develop the Monotropism Questionnaire, in an effort to measure how monotropic people are; this has backed up the suspicion that […]

    Reply
  7. Andrea Stuart avatar
    Andrea Stuart

    I just broke it….235 out of 235
    Average score 5
    More M than 100% of autistics and 100% of allistics. My therapist said I’m the first person they’ve had as a client with that score.
    Thankyou for providing resources for us. Not gonna lie, I’m super anxious about my level of M being a problem for everyone else, because now I know why even some of my nd friends think I’m weird, and that’s super confusing and my brain can’t even.
    At least now I have something to work with, and a long road ahead as I finally get to know myself better.

    Reply
    1. Fergus avatar
      Fergus

      Oh wow, I think you might be the first person to get a perfect score, although others have come close!

      The diversity of humans does cause difficulties, of course, but that’s not really anybody’s fault. All we can do is learn how to work with our own differences, and those of others…

      Reply
      1. Andrea avatar
        Andrea

        That is very true….thankyou for your kind words.

        It is very nice to meet at find you all.

        Reply
  8. Taki avatar
    Taki

    A very interesting questionnaire, and the approach to the subject of neurodiversity in terms of monotropism is certainly another element in the puzzle of differences between people. I have certain traits of a schizoid personality, which is why, unfortunately, other people sometimes mistake my behavior for a symptom of autism. Even the psychiatrist I consulted was initially almost certain that it was something on the spectrum, but there were no symptoms of sensory problems, there were no signs of a theory of mind disorder. In tests such as the AQ, I usually get a result in the middle, which is why the screening test itself is not unambiguous. In the MQ test, I initially got a result of 3.1, which would mean that this test effectively differentiates neurotypes. However, I wondered whether the test result is sensitive not only to how many answers agree or disagree with the profile of typical or atypical people, but also to the intensity of the trait described by the answers. One of the traits of a schizoid personality is a “weak internal sense of self”, sometimes it is so intense that a person cannot describe themselves. In the case of tests and questionnaires, this manifests itself in the tendency to choose answers in the middle and avoid extreme answers, because everything that concerns the interior seems not to be very intense. Yes, I am a man, but not “strongly”; I am probably a human being but I do not feel it strongly – and so on. That is why I waited two weeks and took the test again, this time choosing more decisive answers. The result was 3.5. This means that the test result is not very sensitive to subjective feelings whether a given answer fits us strongly or only so-so, but there is a certain effect. (I do not know what the general repeatability of retests is). In the case of people whose response profile is somewhere in between, it may have an impact on determining which neurotype fits them better. Someone who chooses less decisive answers will have a slightly different result than someone who chooses the same set of answers of agreement or disagreement but chooses stronger answers. Has it been checked how replacing the Likert scale with a simplified scale with three answers affects the differentiation of neurotypes?

    Reply

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