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Journal Club #2 (June)

Writer's picture: Ashley MuskettAshley Muskett


The authors: Rachel Grove , Rosa A Hoekstra, Marlies Wierda, and Sander Begeer


The journal: Autism


Summary: This article takes a look at the well known occurrence of special interests in Autistic folks. For those who don't know, many Autistic people have one or two very specific interests that they spend a significant amount of time engaged in pursuing and/or are very knowledgeable about. This is where the stereotype of a little boy who knows everything about trains comes from. And while many Autistic people do like trains, special interest are extremely varied and can include basically anything! A lot of past research has asked questions with the underlying assumption that these intense interests negatively impact Autistic quality of life by limiting Autistic people's ability to engage more broadly with a variety of topics, as well as socialize with those who don't share their interests. This article shifts that perspective and examines if special interests are actually helpful for motivation, joy, socialization, and well being in Autistic people. The article utilized measures that determined whether or not the participants in the study had a special interest. About 35% did not, and this group was compared to the group who did report a special interest.


There were no differences in overall subjective well-being between the group who reported having a special interest and those who did not. However, participants with a special interest reported higher satisfaction with their leisure time. The article also found that engagement in special interests in largely intrinsically motivated. Other research has shown that intrinsic motivation is important for cognitive and social development. Taken together with the fact that most participants reported their special interests having a positive impact in their life both as children and currently, it may be the case the engagement in special interests is helpful for the fostering and development of intrinsic motivation. However, there was a correlation with higher number of hours engaging in special interests being related to lower levels of subjective wellbeing, but the authors rightly point out that those with low subjective well being may be engaging more with their special interests as a coping mechanism.


Why did you choose this article, Ashley? As we know by this point, Autism is an area of interest for me in the professional work. I also try to work from strengths based perspective. I think it's easy in any scientific pursuit to convince ourselves that we're asking objective questions and forget that all those questions are being asked from a specific vantage point. This article is a nice illustration that by changing the underlying assumption that special interests are a 'symptom' and symptoms= bad, we can see things in a new way. For example, from the perspective of special interests as a symptom we may see the correlation that higher number of hours spent on special interests was related to less subjective well being we might assume that time spent on special interests is negatively impacting well being. However, when we come from the underlying assumption that special interests are fun and rewarding for Autistic folks, we may conclude that Autistic folks who aren't feeling well may spend more time trying to engage in things that make them happy.


What did you think? Love it! Yes, results are theoretically objective but what questions we ask and how we interpret the "objective" results is heavily steeped in the beliefs we hold every day but don't think about. By making sure we think critically about our own background and assumptions, we learn more about the things we want to know about!




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