Attention to presentation, without judging its success.
The Masking part concerns monitoring or adjusting expressions, body language and impressions. Its eight-item readout summarizes agreement with the published statements; it does not rate honesty, social skill, visible behaviour or how much energy an interaction costs.
Masking uses original items 2, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21 and 24. Reverse items 12 and 24 as 8 minus the response. Eight numeric responses give a sum from 8 to 56 and a mean from 1 to 7. A skip withholds this part and the total.
What the published part asks
- These items describe attention to how you appear during interactions: looking relaxed or interested, considering the impression you make, and attention to facial or bodily presentation. They ask about your own experience. They do not ask an observer to confirm what you looked like or whether another person noticed a difference.
- The research label Masking is retained to identify this part. It does not establish deceit or a hidden true self. A score cannot decide whether a smile was genuine, whether an interaction was safe, or whether you should change how you present yourself.
Why monitoring and adjusting stay separate
- The source includes separate statements about monitoring and adjusting facial expressions or body language. It also separates thinking about an impression from being aware of it. These distinctions can sound close in everyday speech, but this edition keeps the published wording, order and part assignments.
- Answer each statement as written, rather than trying to make your answers identical or different for consistency. Similar wording is not a trick that lets the site infer dishonesty. No consistency penalty, hidden lie score or deduction from a person’s character is applied.
Two reverse items within eight responses
- Items 12 and 24 are reversed before the eight values are added. A response of 1 becomes 7, and 7 becomes 1; the midpoint 4 remains 4. The other six responses contribute their selected numbers. All eight answers of 4 therefore give 32, with a mean of 4.00.
- All answers of 1 give 20, while all answers of 7 give 44. Neither pattern reaches the mathematical endpoints because two items point the other way. The range 8–56 describes possible arithmetic, not a clinical low-to-high ladder, and the mean is not a percentile.
Presentation and experience can differ
- Someone might check their expression during a meeting because they want to look interested. The questionnaire can record their agreement with that statement. It cannot establish whether they felt interested, whether others thought so, or whether checking required effort or helped the conversation.
- A similar action can reflect courtesy, an unfamiliar setting or a personal preference. CAT-Q does not select one explanation from the score. In particular, endorsing these statements is not evidence that ordinary impression management is uniquely autistic or that an autism diagnosis has been established.
Read without ranking people
- A larger recoded sum means greater endorsement of these particular statements in this attempt. It does not measure quality of communication, effectiveness at concealing a trait, authenticity or energy expenditure. A smaller sum likewise cannot show effortless interaction or absence of support needs.
- The developers’ 2026 public perspective cautions against diagnostic and intervention-outcome uses. The Chinese working translation is not validated or established as equivalent to English. No diagnostic-group average, gender comparison or cut point is used to label your result.
Choice and comfort before a target score
- If you want to reflect privately, consider whether attending to your presentation feels useful, chosen or tiring in a particular setting. There is no ideal amount of attention to achieve. This page does not ask you to force eye contact, conceal discomfort or perform a more acceptable version of yourself.
- You are also not instructed to stop a strategy, disclose an identity or experiment with removing a behaviour in an unsafe setting. Support can begin with your preferences and practical needs. It does not require proving a CAT-Q score or showing that the number has fallen.
Skipped responses and public links
- If any of these eight responses is skipped, the part sum and mean are withheld along with the overall total. Complete Compensation or Assimilation parts can remain visible. The site does not replace a skip with a midpoint or calculate a shortened Masking score.
- All four full guides remain available. Public links contain no numerical readout or response, and answers stay in page memory only. Clearing or retaking removes them; a later score is a fresh self-report, not a monitored health outcome or a record of personal improvement.