Researchers are figuring out how sense of self develops differently in autistic teens

By guest blogger Dan Carney Our autobiographical memory is fundamental to the development of our sense of self. However, according to past research, it may be compromised in autism, together with other skills that are also vital for self understanding, such as introspection and the ability to attribute mental states to others (known as mentalising). For example, experiments involving autistic children have highlighted retrieval difficulties, “impoverished narratives”, and a greater need for prompting, while also suggesting that semantic recall (facts from the past) may be impaired in younger individuals. Now a UK research team, led by Sally Robinson from London’s St. Thomas’ Hospital, has published the first attempt to assess the nature of – and relationships between – autobiographical memory, mentalising and introspection in autism. Reporting their findings in Autism journal, the group hope their results will shed more light on the way that autistic children and teens develop a sense of self. The researchers compared the performance of 24 autistic participants (age range: 11-18; 4 girls) and 24 age- and gender-matched neurotypical participants on three tasks. The first, designed to tap semantic and episodic aspects of autobiographical memory, required them to recall what kind of personality they showed in different contexts (at school, with the family, when happy etc) and to describe specific episodes from their lives in which they’d behaved as that kind of pe...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Autism guest blogger Memory Thought Source Type: blogs