Self-competence involves the link between the self-awareness of an individual’s personal worth and efficacy which includes self-esteem, self-determination, (or self-regulation) and successful handling of life experiences (Capps, Sigman, & Yirmiya, 1995; Jacobs, Lanza, Osgood, Eccles, & Wigfield, 2002). Individuals with autism can experience a reduced sense or awareness of self, along with a less self-descriptive ability at the psychological and social levels. Research confirms that an apparently underdeveloped personal identity in some people with autism may contribute to ineffectual social adjustment (Jackson, Skirrow, & Hare, 2012). Essentially, lacking a good self-concept may have a significant impact on areas such as self-esteem, self-determination, and successful handling of life experiences. In addition, abilities to know and understand one’s own competencies is critical to social functioning, yet a study conducted by Furlano, Kelley, Hall, and Wilson (2015) found that despite difficulties in multiple domains, individuals with autism demonstrated a lack of awareness of their own difficulties. Lacking this type of awareness could potentially lead to refusal to consider that a problem is of one’s own doing and possibility shift blame to another, resulting in conflict.
Self-Regulation
Self-regulation is the ability of individuals to manage the self in a way that is socially acceptable in order to achieve positive goals and maintain effective relationships while continuing to develop, learn, and maintain wellbeing. Self-regulation requires four psychological components. These components are (a) awareness of one’s own behaviour, (b) an understanding how others are reacting to one’s own behaviour, (c) detecting threats, and (d) resolving discrepancies between self-knowledge and social expectations or norms to motivate behaviour in order to resolve conflicts (Heatherton, 2011). In an attempt to achieve these four psychological components, first and foremost, people need self-awareness to reflect on their behaviours, including their emotional displays, so as to judge them against group norms. However, a number of studies suggest that aspects of self-awareness are diminished and/or atypical in those with autism (Williams, 2010). Individuals with autism frequently have difficulty identifying and reflecting on their own mental states, as well as their own emotions. The self-concept guides and controls behaviour. Without competency in both self-awareness and other awareness to guide and control behaviour, interpersonal interactions can become extremely challenging.
Self-Efficacy
Self-efficacy is the belief in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations. Beliefs about personal efficacy influence how people think, feel, motivate themselves, and act (Bandura, 1995). Self-efficacy plays an essential role in the formation of the self-system, which includes an individual’s attitudes, abilities, and cognitive skills. This system performs a key function in how situations are perceived and how individuals behave in response to these situations. One cannot competently and independently manage life’s situations without a good sense of self. Research confirms that it is not the intensity of emotional and physical reactions that is important, but rather how they are perceived and interpreted (Bandura, 1995), followed by the subsequent response. When individuals are intrinsically motivated to learn how to reduce stress and find ways to improve their mood when encountering difficult or challenging tasks, it is possible for them to improve their sense of self-efficacy. Thus, a self-concept is shaped by an individual’s social capacities, together with life experiences, expectancies, perceptions and responses.
Practice and Learning Impact on Self-Efficacy
In conjunction with a sense of self-efficacy, all individuals, whether or not they have a disability, must practice collaborative and interactive skills and abilities frequently, together with accepting some sort of feedback to know how they are performing. However, individuals with autism, unlike typically developing individuals, often experience difficulties with learning from commonplace experiences or improving from typical feedback occurrences. They often do not have good self-system in place, since experiences of multiple failures in the ability to adequately deal with tasks or challenges can undermine and weaken self-efficacy. Nor do they naturally respond to the usual types of cues that are generally effective for the general population, such as verbal instructions or by observing and imitating others, in order for the feedback received to act as support mechanisms, and to increase competence. To compensate, when a poor self-system has operated together with the experience of multiple failures, individuals with autism, can get stuck in inappropriate or unhealthy patterns of behaviour.
Research confirms that many individuals with autism have self-esteem difficulties due to having experienced victimisation resulting from their difference, such as teasing and/or physical bullying. This may have life-long consequences leading to long-standing frustration and suspiciousness of others, as well as poor self-esteem (Tantam, 2000). Delayed recognition of autism in mainstream schools can result in exposure to ineffective or inappropriate teaching methods, which disregard the specific problems that students with autism have in regard to communication and understanding (Howlin & Asgharian, 1999). The outcome of this educational failure can also set off low self-esteem and depression, rejection by peers, and sometimes harsh treatment from teachers. Psychiatric and emotional difficulties that last into adulthood, can result, with fear of failure a key influencing factor. Hence, these factors in the social environment have the ability to thwart any potential one might have to become self-motivated and form self-determined behaviours.
The Underlying Basis for Impaired Self Competencies
Research confirms that psychologists of many theoretical persuasions associate low self-esteem as a factor in behavioural and emotional problems as a result of rejection (Leary, Schreindorfer, & Haupt, 1995). Self-protecting behaviours resulting from a fear of failure can produce a cautious, evasive approach to interpersonal interactions (Baumeister, Tice, & Hutton, 1989). Individuals with low self-esteem doubt their value to a partner/family member which can add further complications to interpersonal interactions. This doubt may increase a tendency to resist positive feedback from a partner/family member which undermines their relationship (Showers & Zeigler-Hill, 2007). Confidence in a partner’s or family member’s positive regard allows individuals to put aside self-protective behaviour and take the risk of thinking and behaving in ways that promote the value of the partner and the relationship. In contrast, self-protective behaviour decreases closeness. Behaving in this relationship-destructive manner devalues the other partner’s significance within the relationship. Unhealthy interpersonal interactions can be the result when feeling rejected (Marigold, Holmes, & Ross, 2007). These circumstances can set the occasion for people to deliberately avoid social interactions.
How Self Competencies Affects Adult Interaction
A consistent finding of research into self-competency is that, although those with low self-esteem want affirmation from their partner and family members, and need relationships as a source of acceptance, their self-doubts translates into relationship insecurities, which prevent the very benefits to self-esteem that healthy relationships offer. When lacking self-esteem, mental processes such as compartmentalisation can result, further undermining relationship well-being. Compartmentalisation is defined as the practice in which individuals low in self-esteem tend to separate positive and negative knowledge about others in their memory, viewing a person unrealistically in two distinct positive and negative categories and alternating between the two (Graham & Clark, 2006). Unpredictable behaviour resulting from compartmentalised reasoning can also impact on individuals’ intrinsic motivation.
How Intrinsic Motivation Affects Adult Interaction
If lacking intrinsic motivation to remedy interaction difficulties, adults with autism may withdraw from relationship interactions and responsibilities. They may prefer to escape rather than attempt to deal with interactions that are seen as problematic, mundane, or uninteresting to them (Berney, 2004). Unhealthy patterns of relating may tend to worsen the propensity to become dependent and/or controlling within interactions. Rather than self-regulate communication failure, a lack of intrinsic motivation may result in a reliance on others to solve the problem, or else avoid the problem through stonewalling. Stonewalling is an emotional, psychological, and/or physical withdrawal from an interaction, which functions as a way to minimise or terminate an interaction and is considered the most severe behaviour in terms of detriment to a relationship (Futris, Campbell, Nielsen, & Burwell, 2010). These behaviours can pave the way to neglect responsibilities or disregard partners’ or family members’ needs, with a failure to adapt to the changeable requirements that relationships bring (Grigg, 2012; Lovett, 2005; Rodman, 2003). Insufficient motivation to resolve any relational issues that arise for adults with autism may cause them to put the responsibility for relationship conduct onto others, rather than through their own internal motivation or initiative. The experience of unsuccessful encounters can build repeated failure, and this in turn, may foster feelings of futility and frustration. These feelings can intensify anxiety, which in turn can intensify avoidance reactions and self-preservation responses for adults with autism.
In contrast, the ideal circumstance for healthy relationships is when interdependence occurs (Ruppel & Curran, 2012). Interdependence is when both people are mutually reliant on each other. Ending a tendency to choose self-interests in preference for shared joint outcomes of a partner/family member supports an interdependent relationship (Ruppel & Curran, 2012). Thus, the core features of autism, the cognitive features of autism, and the atypical social development of autism, all can consolidate and impact on the social learning ability of individuals with autism. Missing successful experiences and inadequate social learning, an impoverished self-system has the potential to form. The result may be to mature with a lack intrinsic motivation to put the required effort into maintaining a healthy relationship, especially when increased effort often equates to more failure. Consequently, many adults with autism may perceive working on their relationship as a lost cause leading to learned helplessness and negative behaviours.
Dr. Bronwyn Wilson
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