Anemone's Research Emporium

Autism and Boundaries in the Mind

Boundaries, whether they are between different states of consciousness, different people, or different countries, are imaginary lines we experience in our minds to differentiate between different concepts. Some people have very thick lines - to them categories are clearly separate and distinct; while others have very thin lines - to them categories tend to blur into each other. This affects not only conscious concepts but also behaviour, sensory experiences, and degrees of consciousness.

Autistic people may or may not have thinner boundaries in the mind. Who knows? Let's find out!

The Hartmann Boundary Questionnaire (145 items), created by Ernest Hartmann and colleagues (Hartmann, 1991), measures boundary thickness in both interpersonal and internal boundaries, and in preferences, habits and opinions. For more details on the scale, see here.

A link to this scale has already been posted in a thread on Wrong Planet. If all you want is your scores, do the test, then don't send the email that it generates. Just copy your scores from the pop up message. If you want me to add your scores to my database, send them in (just send the email). Someday if I get enough data I may post summary data. If your browser/email sends them to me automatically and you don't want them included, let me know. If you don't want to enable javascript or for some reason it doesn't work and you want me to send you scores, copy the scale and your answers into an email (no attachments please!) and send them in and I will get back to you with your scores asap.

Do the test!

Results so far (February, 2009)

Last May (2008) 13 people posted scores on WrongPlanet. The mean for those 13 people was 313.9, the range was 232-404, and the standard deviation was 53.5. Compare this to Hartmann's reported mean of 273 and standard deviation of 51. We score higher on average.

What does this mean? I suspect that all it means at this point is that people who score high on the HBQ are more likely to do psychology questionnaires in the first place. It's unfortunate that there isn't more information available on this scale, because it's possible it might mean something. Perhaps more information will come available in the future. In the meantime keep sending me data.

(At the current time I only have 14 data sets total sent to me by email, and don't feel comfortable number crunching data that hasn't been posted on an internet forum. When I get enough I can do some analyses.)

More information

Ernest Hartmann, 1991. Boundaries in the mind: A new psychology of personality. BasicBooks, NY.