The Interoception Sensory Questionnaire (ISQ): A Scale to Measure Interoceptive Challenges in Adults.

Stephens et al. (2018) built a 20-question checklist for adults. It asks how well people feel what is happening inside their bodies.

They tested it with autistic adults and non-autistic adults. The goal was to see if the scores were steady and meaningful.

Three out of four autistic adults marked “yes” to items like “I can’t tell if I’m hungry or just bored.”

Higher scores matched higher levels of autistic traits. The scale held together well, so it is ready for clinic use.

Tavassoli et al. (2012), Honey et al. (2005), and Blanchette et al. (2016) did the same kind of work. Each team made a new form for the autism field: one for parenting stress, one for general stress, one for social validity. All followed the same check-build-validate steps.

Scahill et al. (2024) also made a brief scale, but for sleep problems in autistic children. Together these papers show a trend: short, targeted rating scales are replacing long, generic ones.

Dembo et al. (2023), Austin et al. (2015), and Cheves et al. (2026) moved the idea to adults with IDD. They measured life skills, quality of life, and distress. None looked at body signals, so the ISQ fills a gap, not a repeat.

If a client can’t tell you “I’m tense” before a meltdown, you need another way to know. Give the ISQ in the waiting room. A quick score tells you who needs help reading body cues. Pair the results with breathing or biofeedback lessons and you have a data-driven road map for self-regulation goals.