Do you self-reference?

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Op, this is a thread from January last year:
http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt222011.html
Is it about that what you mean by "self-reference"?

When I was very little I didn't really self-reference. Probably because I was growing up bilingual. I think this is part of the reason I got diagnosed.

I think in general it can be hard for parents to download an identity onto their child....plenty of people including NTs reject any idenities their parents tried putting on them and have formed their own. Why is it you think autistic people have no ability to form an identity and one would have to download it onto us. I mean we aren't just blank slates that can be molded, at least that is not what I feel like...but that doesn't mean we don't have identities. I mean people autistic people included might find themselves identifying with things or intrested in certain things and form an identity based on that.

Because a defining characteristic of an identity is that it is downloaded, - is constructed from external input.
Babies are not born with an identity, nor would they have a need to form one if they were always isolated from other people.

An identity is a self-schema. It is not something you are born with and the only driving force to have one is for interaction socially.

AS and NT generally construct and use schema differently.

There is a lot of misconception about applying free will to things like the construction of a self-schema.
I don't wear cloths, live in a house, or drive a car because I exercised my own free will.
All of those things indicate memes downloaded from other people. My choices within that existing structure create the illusion that I created those memes internally.

The illusion is that you can choose any number you want.
The reality is that you can choose any number on a six-sided dice.

Rebelling against parents, getting tattoos or piercings, is hardly creating your own identity. All of that is downloaded memes from the social environment.

Autistics are generally less attached to schema, and less likely to get locked into one world view, or to process all information through one schema like the identity.
However, as I stated, many autistics are conditioned to do this for the benefit of others, or mimic behaviors in order to blend in.

As far as schema go, the self-schema is the key one for negotiating an environment of hierarchies.

Naturally then, if you are not very attached to a self-schema, and you do not process everything through it, then negotiating hierarchies will not make as much sense to you, or may feel intuitively wrong to you.

If a self-schema has been constructed subconsciously (intuitive), then it is likely all information gets processed through it automatically, with only the conclusions of that processing bubbling up into conscious thought. One would have little awareness of this process, and be less likely to do anything about it.

If a self-schema has been constructed in conscious thought as a simulation, then all information would not automatically be processed through it. The individual would consciously decide to use this schema, or other schemas.

Ah ha, thank you for the clarification, now I can answer the poll.

It is somewhere between consciously for the benefit of others and for my own benefit, which I see as distinct from intuitively. In effect, I have filtered some things through my "identity" for so long they seem self referenced, even intuitive. Yet there are many things and situations where I have to consciously remind myself to act and think according to a particular identity.

Not exactly.
I had not seen that before as I came here later, but I will look through it.
It seems she is analyzing the outward expression of identity.
I'm more interested in the underlying nature, and not the expression.

Of course it takes external input and interacting with the world and other people to form an identidy...and autistic people are certainly capable of that though we have difficulties with social interaction. Also maybe some people have an identidy their parents 'downloaded' onto them, but I certainly do not feel my mother or dad formed my identidy though I am sure interactions with them have contributed some to it. Also where did I say rebelling against parents or getting a tattoo is forming ones identidy? It would contribute I imagine but I was thinking more people experience and learn things on their own and aren't going to stick to any molds their parents might have tried pushing them into, though some may.

Either way I think autistic people are capable of forming identidies.

What I meant was that in the social world there are imaginary ideas that we subscribe to and label ourselves with. As a "bank account holder" all that you have is money that exists somewhere inside a computer, and even when you draw it out of the ATM the only thing that's physically real about that money is it's properties, not it's value.

I think people are a bit confused about what this has to do with negative or not negative, ASD or neurotypical, low functioning or high functioning. It is it's own subject people and it has nothing to do with value judgments. I for example have a hard time labeling myself and when I think of myself these things don't come to my mind of themselves.

I have to think about it and say "yeah I'm a stoner, musicologist, piano teacher, uncle, etc.". I'm just a person, that's my normal state and I often find it hard to understand how much people try to delineate themselves from each other, especially how they do it with systems of hierarchy. I don't understand the compulsion because I simply don't have it and I don't think much about my identity or how I compare to other people. Unless I'm specifically talking about the subject with a friend or on a forum like this, self referencing doesn't figure in a lot. I prefer to say things like "I feel this", "I did this", "I like this" as opposed to "I am this".

So very true. My mother and I never had much of a parent child relationship. She still didn't feel like I was her peer until I was a bit older, but it was always something confusing in between and it was hard for her to understand that I didn't have to be around her a lot, like other children. Many times I was oblivious to things like "well I'm a kid, what do kids do, so I guess I should be doing that" and I wasn't very observant of other people unless there was a problem. They were just people to me, I didn't think much of how they fit in with each other and this whole thing of hierarchy feels no different to me than alphas and betas in a pack.

Just silliness that glues society together because we are helpless to think rationally as a group together without it. The president of the united states is just a person. He goes through normal person stuff. I fail to see what makes us so different. He just had the personality and background that everyone wanted. They wanted someone who had worked as a community organizer, not a guy like me.

Last edited by Lukecash12 on 28 Oct 2014, 12:13 am, edited 1 time in total.

I guess I just don't understand how these concepts are imaginary, human constructs maybe but not exactly imaginary as imaginary implies something does not exist. And I know various catagories of people exist...I suppose depending on what I am talking about would determine if I want to say 'I am this' or if I'd want to say 'I did this'.

I'm going to look at this from the viewpoint of one of my strongest and oldest "identities", that of someone who rides a bike. I feel I self-reference as a biker.

I've probably spent more time riding a bike than just about any other deliberate activity besides sleeping. People know me as the guy who bikes, I ride for enjoyment, transportation, commuting. I ride pretty much every day, year 'round in a climate that gets pretty nasty in winter. Been doing this for 20 years.

I feel that I actively chose the identity of a biker, as I could stop riding for the rest of my life and no longer identify myself as a biker.

I didn't choose this identity to help others understand me, I just really like to ride a bike.

Is this self referencing? Intuitive?

How do I fit into a hierarchy? I used to race bikes, and was a fair to middling local competitor. To my group of riding friends I was the fast guy. Now, as a guy who just rides a bike, some people admire my dedication, that's nice. I have a feeling that some people who see me riding everyday who don't know me might think I'm weird, I have been the victim of many catcalls.

Maybe some people think I lost my license to drive, or can't afford a car. We went over 6 years without a car, and one of our neighbor's kids asked her mom if we were poor, because we didn't have a car.

So I can see how I choose to ride a bike, and choose that identity, but how am I responsible for how others identify me? (poor, weird, DUI license revoked, admirable)

And how does other's perception of my identity affect my sense of self?

this was confusing at first but i think i am understanding now. maybe. you're asking if people label themselves with an identity and if so do they do it automatically or consciously? like if they really like to do paint, they might reference themselves as a painter? or identify as a father or that sort of thing?

i have always had trouble with this sort of thing, i have thought about it a lot. i can't seem to come up with an identity for myself except for "me". when you don't do it automatically, people get uncomfortable (i think) or upset. they dont like it. i'm not sure why. i think it has something to do with how their identities are always so intertwined with others.

so i guess my answer would not be #1 because i dont do this intuitively. maybe sometimes i would do it conciously, but not for the benefit of others, only so i dont get in trouble. i will pick answer 3 on poll

Unit_00, that is how I read it, but I'm not sure. I've had trouble with the "identity" thing myself.

Like you, I've always thought of myself as "me", with a bunch of things that I do added on.

On the other hand, when people ask me questions about myself, they must be creating an identifying matrix about me from my answers. Where are you from? Do you like baseball? what college did you go to?

Based on these answers and the questioner's level of bias or stereotypical thinking might lead them to believe things about me, some true some not. So the idea that someone self-references for the benefit of others seems to me to just be the answers I might give to peoples questions.

But I learned so long ago that I like baseball, and it wasn't because my parents did, makes that answer seem pretty intuitive to me.

If my identity was "downloaded" to me from my parents, I would like to go bowling, keep a garden and work on old cars.

The third option "using similar words and phrases" makes no sense to me in terms of self reference.

People are not usually aware of what they are doing subconsciously, so this question of how are you doing something like self-referencing or using your identity (these are all ill-defined idears) is not easy to answer accurately. Someone who says they are doing something consciously may ackshuly be doing that thing or other similar things subconsciously without being aware of it. And the construction in this thread and others of ASD this way vs. NT that way is making up some identities and filtering self and others through those. To me, it seems like overgeneralizations that may reflect how one wants things to be, but of course, these things are not concrete things, so each person can make up how they want things to be.

Here's something from the other thread that might be helpful here:




An example of #3 could be an autistic who is conditioned for responses to others.
For example, someone they see daily might say "hi how are you?" and the autistic would return the learned "I am fine".

That appears to be self-referencing, but the autistic may not be self-referencing internally at all.


As for determining conscious from subconscious processing, one should be able to back-track each step of conscious thought to include all logical steps, references to stored memory, etc...

Anything that intrudes on conscious though comes through intuitively, often described as a "feeling" which cannot be tracked in the same way.

If your conscious thought process includes a data that has no logical origin, then that could either be a flaw in conscious construction, or evidence of contamination from intuition.

I'm not assuming that everyone can do this, but this is what I do.
Back tracing/tracing how you think consciously is called metacognition, and is something most computer programmers have to develop as a tool in order for them to debug their code.

I realize some of the answers here may be best guesses.
That's ok.

I think NTs and autistics both give automatic responses like I am fine to questions like how are you.
For tracing back conscious thought processes, people often make up things to rationalize something a certain way, including where certain data came from.