Self-perception of competencies in adolescents with autism spectrum disorders.
Autistic teens think they are doing better in school than they really are, so always pair praise with objective performance data.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Furlano et al. (2015) asked teens with autism and typical teens to rate their own school skills. Then the researchers checked the ratings against real grades.
The study used a case-control design. This means they compared two groups side by side to spot differences.
What they found
Teens with autism gave themselves much higher marks than their actual grades showed. Typical teens were closer to the truth.
The gap was large enough that the authors call it “inflated self-perception of competence.”
How this fits with other research
Sasson et al. (2018) found the same over-estimation pattern in adults. Adults with autism thought strangers liked their personality more than the strangers really did. Together, the two papers trace a lifespan trend: autistic people of many ages misjudge how they appear to others.
Ben-Itzchak et al. (2016) looked at younger autistic boys describing their own emotions. The boys gave odd or blank answers. Rosaria’s teens, a few years older, still show skewed self-views but in the school domain. The pair shows self-awareness gaps start early and stay.
Guiberson et al. (2014) seems to disagree. They report autistic teens are extra-cautious and need more facts before deciding. Cautious thinkers should under-rate themselves, not over-rate. The difference is the task: Mark’s study used a neutral beads game, while Rosaria asked about personal school success. Social self-questions trigger bias; abstract puzzles do not.
Why it matters
Expect glowing self-reports that do not match reality. When a client says, “I aced that test,” check the score sheet before you celebrate. Give clear, kind feedback tied to real data. Use rubrics, graphs, or work samples so the teen sees the gap. Over time, this builds more accurate self-monitoring and protects them from future disappointment.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Research has demonstrated that, despite difficulties in multiple domains, children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) show a lack of awareness of these difficulties. A misunderstanding of poor competencies may make it difficult for individuals to adjust their behaviour in accordance with feedback and may lead to greater impairments over time. This study examined self-perceptions of adolescents with ASD (n = 19) and typically developing (TD) mental-age-matched controls (n = 22) using actual performance on objective academic tasks as the basis for ratings. Before completing the tasks, participants were asked how well they thought they would do (pre-task prediction). After completing each task, they were asked how well they thought they did (immediate post-performance) and how well they would do in the future (hypothetical future post-performance). Adolescents with ASD had more positively biased self-perceptions of competence than TD controls. The ASD group tended to overestimate their performance on all ratings of self-perceptions (pre-task prediction, immediate, and hypothetical future post-performance). In contrast, while the TD group was quite accurate at estimating their performance immediately before and after performing the task, they showed some tendency to overestimate their future performance. Future investigation is needed to systematically examine possible mechanisms that may be contributing to these biased self-perceptions.
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2015 · doi:10.1002/aur.1491