How do I even with this question? The whole picture is made up of small details, and the details are all in the context of the whole picture. So it’s both. The answer is both and it depends on what the thing is and why you’re having to concentrate on it and where you are in that process. Any project you work on will need big picture perspective to decide what things you need to do, and also need detail perspective to do those things. Any field of study will have its overarching themes and its individual examples.

Let’s look another way. I know they’re not talking about a literal picture (and why use metaphors in an autism test of all things?), but let’s pretend they are. When I look at The Hay Wain I see an idyllic rural scene. Then I see the cart, the house, the horsemen, the dog. I see the whole picture first, then I pick out details. When I look at The Persistence of Memory, I see the face, the clock, the tree, the cliff. Then I wonder what it could mean. I see the details, then (try to) assemble a full picture. It depends. It always flipping depends.

If It gave me specifics, I could answer this. But I’m just floundering with this sort of generality. I am leaning towards Slightly Disagree, only because I am crying out for details trying to interpret this question.

So many times I wanted to talk about ‘el año’, and instead wrote ‘el ano’. 😣

(Spanish. ‘the year’ vs ‘the anus’)

Did you know YAML is a recursive acronym? It stands for ‘YAML AML MAML LAML’

I don’t get the gender neutral either (using Gboard on an older Android). Which is a bit odd because as far as I can tell gender neutral is the base character, and the male and female versions are customisations that are applied as if they were accented characters.

I’d rather have them all as no-gender, no-race, generic little yellow peeps but eh…

Oh no, that was my perception in my words. If there was anything so explicitly hostile I would have taken a picture of that instead.

Some context for my reaction - it has a cover letter that mentioned the high demand on the service and 24+ month wait times. Health service provision here (the UK) is highly politicised (as it is everywhere), and services are always under pressure to cut their wait lists. The application pack came in separate sections for standardised assessment forms, and one for admin details like contact numbers and medical history. This question was in the admin section.

I appreciate your point of view though, and it’s a reasonable possibility. I’ll keep it in mind when I fill it out.

Ooh good thought. Like employment / legal / child custody type problems. That would make me a lot happier with the question (and mad that it’s necessary)

Oh that’s all reasonable information to ask for. And I hadn’t considered the possibility of someone filling it reluctantly at a doctor’s request, so thanks for that. But the format of the question rubs me the wrong way.

“Bearing in mind that our resources are limited, and that you might be mistaken, write a persuasive speech about why you, in particular, merit our attention”. I’m (I think) decently able to express myself. I’m not great at self-advocacy, but I can grit my teeth and do it anyway. Not everyone filling this form will have those advantages. It feels like a barrier for people to self select out of the process, and I have to wonder if was clinicians or administrators that put it there.