Self Concept and Autism

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As you may have guess, I study Psychology, and especially topics relating to autism in anyway and I was preparing an academic paper on the concept of the self and how it develops as well as how it is influence within social psychology and I ran into a study that was conducted that compares the differences on self concept development between severe autistics in contrast with people with mental retardation. Hear me out, the study was interesting, do not start going off about how different they are, of course they are different! Here are some parts of the paper (this is empirical research) that I found interesting and worth debating about:

And this is one of the ideas that struck me of most interest:



This is an idea I can get behind. I can say from personal experience that my actions thoughts and prefferences, even as a small child, had very little to do with the influence of other people. I did not like the same stuff, other little girls liked, nor did I see a need for me to try to find an interest in them so that I may play a more socially acceptable role among them, though these are not the exact terms I thought in at the time, smaller vocabulary I must ad mit.

reference to the article: Also keep in mind the age of the article, which also gives it grounds for debate, considering its age.
Lee, A., & Hobson, R. (1998). On developing self-concepts: a controlled study of children and adolescents with autism. Journal Of Child Psychology And Psychiatry, And Allied Disciplines, 39(8), 1131-1144.

I find this incredibly intriguing as well, but I'm too tired to provide a detailed response. (Sorry, will edit this tomorrow. XD)

This is very much the same as me in that my interests were always my own, and I never 'conformed' by integrating other's interests into my own. I never liked playing with toys or anything like that, and never pretended to call anyone on play phones. It is also very different however in that over time I changed my behaviour to match that of a socially successful person, essentially adapting a persona. I have since I first done that, always done that, and I'm basically a huge slop of mixed personalities of which I cannot distinguish my true self from. I did this as a result of not fitting in as well as learning.

EDIT I - Forgot to add that behaviours such as 'eating properly' at the dinner table took ages to hammer in to me. I always found things like that a nuisance, and my dad and his grandparents would always get extremely cranky at me as a result. My mum also tried to convince my to wash myself properly, and to tuck my shirt in etc, but I didn't. Basically all that social etiquette that everyone else did. I have somewhat changed now due to experiencing painful rejections as a result of smelling and/or looking nasty etc.

I think still have bad table manners. I tend to "bite" the utensils as I put food in my mouth to the chagrin of my wife. I also always have to even out my food around the plate as I eat it, because taking food out sort of takes the entire plate out of . .. synch?

How do you not bite it? This confuses me.

You actually bite forks and spoons when putting them into your mouth?!?!

Most people don't? Then how do they get the food off?

this makes sense to me, that an innate inability to represent the mental representations of others precludes a lack of social pretend play in childhood and the inability to relate to people and to integrate other people into a social conception of self.
And so retain a unique, eccentric, or even a childlike sense of self.

My wife says that most people just take the food off the utensils, without biting them hard enough that you can hear teeth hit metal? I put the utensil in my mouth, set my teeth behind the food and scrape it off the utensil (gosh i do not know how else to describe it) and it makes to her, an awful sound.

The one thing I cannot quite get behind is the lack of pretend play. I had plenty of pretend play I just did not do it often with other children and when I did, I tried to sort of direct it. And I had no qualms pretending to be objects rather than playing roles of other people. I have definitely enjoyed a knack for things like roleplay, if I can use descriptors, rather than act roles out, because I have read so much I have the ability to take little bits and pieces of other characters and make them a person, so I guess that is not overly original, mostly a composition of per-existing fiction rearranged in a new way.

I don't bite utensils, but I refuse to use dinner forks because I have stabbed myself in the mouth with them too many times. I will only use the little desert forks. They seem less intimidating.