Yesterday I had a series of pyschologogical testing at my psychiatrist’s office yesterday in my pursuit to figure what(if any) form of neurodivergnecy I might have. With the added potential that I may be dealing with a form of PTSD from my time in the military(because the VA is so good about helping with that kind of thing).
I was sat down in a small darkened room in front of a computer. I had to sit a particular distance away from the computer, which held had a camera set into the wall. I was then instructed to place a headband around my forehead that had one of those balls you see on a motion capture suit for voice actors doing said motion catpure. This was, obviously, meant to track my head movements for the camera, as well as a secondary camera that was tracing my eye movement.
There was a clicker that was I told to hold in my left hand(or whatever your dominant hand is). The test itself was a blank grey screen on the computer, which would flash a random assortment of a series of four colored shapes:
A red circle
A red square
A blue circle
A blud square
The goal, was to click the button in my hand every time I saw a succession of the same colored shape twice. So red circle -> red cricle = button click. And red circle -> blue circle = do not click the button. These colored shapes would flash at random for what I think was for less than a second, perhaps half a second. The goal was for me to pay as much attention and focus to the screen as possible.
This went on for half an hour. And with the environment I was in, I can say that this was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do in a long time. And being set in a darkened, soundproof chamber with only this screen and unable to really move my head, a half of matching rapidly flashing colored shapes for a half hour felt like something out of A Clockwork Orange. I have to admit it was outright terrible and felt more like three hours than a half an hour.
Next week, my psychiatrist and I are planning to go over the results and where we need to go from here and wether this is enough information(beyond the other testing I’ve already done)in order to get a diagnosis.
The only downside to all of this was the fact that the stress of having to do that test wound up giving me a migraine bad enough that I had to leave work early last night.
Not sure what happens from here, but I hope to have some kind of answer.