Advancing the Personalization of Assessment and Intervention in Autistic Adolescents and Young Adults by Targeting Self-Determination and Executive Processes

Lay summary Why is this topic important? Self-determination is about having opportunities and supports to make or cause things to happen in your life. Research over the past 25 years has shown that self-determined young people have more positive employment, postsecondary education, and community participation outcomes. Self-determined people set and go after goals that are important to them and use an understanding of their strengths and support needs and the resources available to them in their communities. During the transition to adulthood, autistic adolescents and young adults can benefit from supports for self-determination and executive processes such as inhibitory control (keeping attention on something even if there are distractions) and cognitive flexibility (changing actions based on what goal a person is working toward). To personalize self-determination interventions, understanding self-determination and executive process abilities is important. What is the purpose of this article? The purpose of this article was to introduce new ways of thinking about the relationship between self-determination (making or causing things to happen in your life) and executive processes (a set of abilities people use as they work toward goals). This article describes ways that integrating research on self-determination and executive processes can lead to more effective personalized supports for autistic adolescents and young adults. It also highlights how autistic people can be engaged in these efforts. What do the authors conclude? We conclude that there is alignment between research on self-determination and executive processes. We describe how assessing self-determination and executive process abilities can be done in partnership with autistic adolescents and young adults and used to personalize interventions. We illustrate ways that supports for inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility can be integrated into existing self-determination interventions, such as the Self-Determined Learning Model of Instruction (SDLMI). We discuss how this integration can be used to provide meaningful personalized supports that are aligned to each autistic person's identified areas of strengths and need as well as their goals for the future. Better understanding the relationship between executive processes and self-determination can support autistic young people to become more self-determined. What do the authors recommend for future research on this topic? We recommend future research focused on using different assessments of self-determination and executive process to identify support needs and personalize self-determination interventions. We also recommend research focus on how to embed supports for executive processes in self-determination intervention, such as the SDLMI. We emphasize the importance of participatory research approaches that directly engage the autistic community and autistic researchers in identifying meaningful supports. How will these recommendations help autistic adults now or in the future? New approaches to understanding self-determination and executive process can lead to better ways to support autistic adolescents and young adults to use their strengths to go after goals that matter to them. There are many opportunities to build more effective supports, in partnership with autistic advocates and researchers, that address the values and vision of the autistic community. As autistic adolescents and young adults navigate the transition to adulthood, there is a need to partner with them to identify strengths and needed supports to enable goal-directed actions. This article conceptually integrates research on self-determination, defined by Causal Agency Theory, and executive processes in autism to provide direction for future research and practice. We describe how integrating research on self-determination and executive processes could enable autistic adolescents and young adults to be engaged in the process of assessing executive processes and self-determination. We discuss how this can better inform personalization of supports for self-determination interventions by focusing on support needs related to executive processes, including inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility, from a strengths-based perspective. We discuss how this can enable self-determination interventions that promote outcomes aligned with the values of the autistic community.