A day in L.A.

As I might have mentioned before, I have been planning a trip to L.A. in order to attend a workshop on the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS). And I have been there! And came back! The summary of my trip? I met a lot of interesting people, I learned a lot, I saw a lot, and waited even more.

For those of you more interested in a more in-depth analysis here it comes:

Interesting people:

There were people from all around, including Japan. This turned out to be very unfortunate since the news of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami hit us on the second day of the workshop. Although definitely not comparable to the disaster in Japan, the coastal area of California (where we live) also got a warning sign because of the tsunami. But fortunately the effect of the tsunami was negligible in the Bay area.

At the workshop, I've talked to several people, all of whom had interesting stories. Of course most people were working in the field of autism, so it was not difficult to find some common ground. In addition I sorta 'met' two children, who were part of the live demonstration of the ADOS. Isn't it amazing that the kids got up on stage in order to be assessed with the ADOS in front of a hundred people? Even more so when you think that there were quite a few people in the audience who declined the opportunity to talk into the microphone.  Really! I'm not kidding. They were afraid to talk into the microphone to discuss their ideas and passed it to someone next to them who did not show microphonebia.

Things I've learned:

I am now familiar with the ADOS. It has to be said that it is an amazing instrument with a lot of potential. But it is also very difficult to score it in a reliable fashion. The ADOS consists of semi-structured tasks that try to provoke a certain type of social or communicative behavior in a semi-natural way. Although it has specific tasks, you don't actually score the actual performance on these tasks, but score the overall behavior you saw during the session. This has many advantages, but it means it's also difficult to asses whether some type of behavior was good enough to give full credit. Since the main difficulty of the instrument lies in its scoring, most of the workshop was dedicated to discussion on the scoring of the live demonstrations. As stated, we had to discuss our findings within the group. Yes, with the microphone. In addition to my new DSM classification of microphonebia, I also found out that people see very different things even when they are looking at the same thing. It wasn't just differences in opinion concerning the label of 'slightly unusual behavior' and 'normal behavior', scoring went from 'normal behavior' to 'downright off-the-wall behavior'. Especially when we got to talking about stereotyped behavior and specific interests, people differed in their observations and interpretations. The interesting thing was, once somebody saw one particular behavior that was considered to be stereotyped, other people joined with other examples and so the list got longer and longer. So the main thing I've learned concerning the ADOS, it requires a lot of practice. Not to administer it, but to score it.

Another important thing I've learned: remember your room number when you stay in a hotel.

Things I saw:

(not uncommon) psychologists playing a game on their iPhone or Smart phone during the workshop. Makes you wonder whether they do the same during a psychological assessment or interview with parents...

L.A. by night on a tour bus. This was a lot of fun, especially since some other people from the workshop also got on the same tour. We've seen it all. Well, ok, technically we mainly saw Hollywood. But that was amazing. Film sets, Universal City, the Chinese theatre (with the hand prints), the place where the Oscars are being held, the walk of fame (with the stars), you name it. Oh and we've seen 'tha ghetto' although that was not in the original itinerary. During our ride back to the hotel, we found ourselves in the midst of a huge traffic accident and we had to find an exit. This exit consisted of our tour bus going from the far left lane to the outer right lane in the midst of all the confusion (yes we had close calls), and exiting straight into the ghetto. Not that we saw scary things or anything.

Things I waited for:

Not for the food. Boy, they serve things quickly around here. But I did wait for airplanes, checks, lectures, breaks, toilet visits (there were about a hundred people visiting a social oriented workshop, you guess which line was longest, the boy's or the girl's...).

Featuring Lucas' talk. He's getting the hang of this English thing, and the translation of it:

Dad (to Kwint): "Nee, dat mag niet."

Lucas: "nee is no he? NO!"

Lucas: "Flyyyyyyy!"

Lucas: "wiels of de bus go wound en wound... up en down"

Lucas: "Mama, kijk! Mommy, look!"

Lucas (hoort een slaapmuziekje op de radio): "Sleep, sleep!"

Mama: "Kijk Lucas, dat zijn twee auto's. Two cars."

Lucas: "Dat is een twocar he?"

And funny Dutch things:

Lucas: "Mama, waar is de radido?"

Lucas: "Ik wil graag naar papa toe."