Identity in Autism

Identity in Autism

Introduction

Identity is an important part of social cognition and behavior. In general, identity represents a person’s place in the social world in relation to others, as well as facts and identifiers that distinguish one person from another (Parnas & Zandersen 2018)(Crespi & Dinsdale 2019). Pragmatic language & cognitive empathy may be related to the expression, experience, and understanding of identity, and because autism involves reductions in pragmatic language & cognitive empathic abilities, it may lead to identity being expressed and understood in a non-social way (Baron-Cohen 2005). Identity in autism however does not seem to be well characterized in the literature beyond recognizing general “impairments” in the development of identity. Based on existing empirical evidence and my own personal experience and observation of the expression and experience of identity in autistic people, I provide a hypothesis for how identity is related to autism and autistic, and report the results of an empirical test of the hypothesis.

I hypothesize that autism relates to an increased focus on an expression of identity in social interactions, in such a way that is “self-focused”, similar to how autistic people tend to base social interactions on their own interests (Baron-Cohen 2005)(Cloudfindings 2022b). The experience of identity in autism tends to be more “factual” and autistic individuals tend to define themselves by factual information about them, such as their ethnic identity, political affiliations, sexual orientation, or communities & subcultures they are part of: an example of such being in the fact that autistic people generally prefer to be referred to as “autistic people” rather than “having autism”. The notion that reduced social cognition and a focus on the self would increase the degree to which they define themselves based on communities, demographics, and social groups they are part of may seem counter-intuitive, however I argue that this is a characteristic of social behavior motivated by personal, non-social interests rather than motivated by social interaction in itself as is seen in autism (Cloudfindings 2022b). 

Study & Results

I created 11 items intending to reflect what I hypothesized to characterize identity in autism [Table 1]. These items were included in a survey which also included scales to measure autistic traits (see Cloudfindings 2022b).

Table 1

My religious beliefs are an important part of how I define myself

My gender identity is an important part of how I define myself

My sexual orientation is an important part of how I define myself

My ethnic identity is an important part of how I define myself

My national identity is an important part of how I define myself

My interests are an important part of how I define myself

My political affiliation is an important part of how I define myself

A psychiatric or neurodevelopmental condition I have is an important part of how I define myself

Fandoms or communities I am part of are an important part of how I define myself

I tend to display aspects of my identity (e.g., on clothing, social media profiles, etc)

It is important that people acknowledge my identity

I used principal components analysis to test the prediction that all of the items should load onto a common latent factor in the same direction, and this prediction was confirmed, with all items loading >0.4 on the first principal component [Table 2].

Table 2

Item	PC1 Loading
My religious beliefs are an important part of how I define myself	0.50
My gender identity is an important part of how I define myself	0.77
My sexual orientation is an important part of how I define myself	0.59
My ethnic identity is an important part of how I define myself	0.70
My national identity is an important part of how I define myself	0.59
My interests are an important part of how I define myself	0.55
My political affiliation is an important part of how I define myself	0.58
A psychiatric or neurodevelopmental condition I have is an important part of how I define myself	0.51
Fandoms or communities I am part of are an important part of how I define myself	0.56
I tend to display aspects of my identity (e.g., on clothing, social media profiles, etc)	0.41
It is important that people acknowledge my identity	0.60

I then tested for correlations between literal language, AQ imagination subscale, factor scores for autistic interests as in Cloudfindings (2022), and the factor scores obtained for identity in this study. The identity factor correlated positively with autistic interests (r=0.49) and literal language (r=0.33), and a diagnosis or suspected autism (r=0.25), however was uncorrelated with imagination (r=-0.06). The autism phenotype is made up of two seperate but correlated factors, one related to repetitive, systemizing behavior, and one related to social deficits (Cloudfindings 2021). Autistic interests mostly reflect the repetitive domain of autistic traits, whereas imagination mostly reflects social deficits (Nahal et al. 2021), and given the fairly strong correlation of autistic identity with interests but no correlation with imagination, this suggests identity may be part of the repetitive domain of autism. I tested this possibility with factor analysis of the autistic identity scores, autistic interest scores, literal language, and imagination. Autistic identity loaded very strongly onto the first factor along with autistic interests and a smaller loading for literal language, and a loading of essentially zero for imagination. Imagination loaded very strongly onto the second factor along with literal language and a smaller loading for autistic interests, and a loading of essentially zero for autistic identity. [Table 3]

Table 3

	Factor 1 (repetitive)	Factor 2 (social)
Autistic Identity	0.87	-0.03
Autistic Interests	0.81	0.27
Imagination (- is more autistic)	0.04	-0.93
Literal language	0.49	0.72

1. Parnas & Zandersen (2018) Self and schizophrenia: current status and diagnostic implications

2. Crespi & Dinsdale (2019) Autism and psychosis as diametrical disorders of embodiment 

3. Baron-Cohen (2005) Autism «Autos»: Literally

4. Cloudfindings (2022) Characterizing Repetitive Behaviors & Interests Specific to Autism: The Autistic Interests Scale

5. Cloudfindings (2021) The Shared Etiology of Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior and Autistic Repetitive Behavior

6. Nahal et al. (2021) Cognitive Empathy as Imagination: Evidence From Reading the Mind in the Eyes in Autism and Schizotypy