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Individual Differences Profile

Ashlyn Rogers
Education Department, College of Southern Idaho
EDUC 205 C20W: Development/ Individual Differences
Dr. Samra Culum
December 5, 2022
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I have always had the ability to understand everyone’s emotions. I am a very emotionally

driven person, and I love helping process theirs. However, it never occurred to me that some

people are able to understand emotions at all. Some people who have autism are unable to

recognize their emotions and the emotions of the people around them. My younger brother

Gabriel was diagnosed with Autism when he was in fourth grade. After that it completely

changed the course of his time in education. In this profile, I will be giving information regarding

Gabriel’s physical, cognitive, and socio-emotional development of a student with sever

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder ADHD and Autism. Finally, will be describing the

steps the teacher and student take to have a successful learning environment, then to summarize

with my findings.

General Information

Gabriel is an eighteen-year-old, white male whose family is moved to Sun Valley when

he was four. He has a middle-class working family, that contains an old brother and sister, a

mom, and a stepdad. Gabriel recently moved out of his childhood home and into the dorms at

Boise State University. After his classes he hangs out with friends either at his dorm or around

campus and lives a seemingly normal life. His routine usually consists of him waking up at

around 9:00 am to shower and get ready for classes. Depending on the day he is either done with

is classes at 1:00pm or 3:00pm. After Gabriel has finished all of his classes for the day, he heads

back to his dorm to finish any homework. During his down time, he plays video games with

friends or takes care of necessary chores. Although he has a routine for school sometimes it gets

interrupted, he tends to struggle. Gabriel stated that when his routine is interrupted, he gets

frustrated very easy, and it becomes even more difficult for him to focus.

Physical Development
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Gabriel is all around a healthy young adult. He is roughly six feet tall with brown hair, eyes, and

fair skin. He is of average build and has very strong masculine features. Although Gabriel is physically

mature, he is not as mentally mature as his peers. He wears contact lenses most days but other times he

wears his glasses and has perfect hearing. Gabriel dresses like his peers to more seeming fit in. However,

he doesn’t necessarily fit in with the emotional maturity of his peers. Gabriel is extremely outgoing and

loves to communicate with the people in his classes. Gabriel however does extremely struggle with

people telling him what to do. He doesn’t get along with people of authority and struggles to complete

tasks when the are demanded of him.

Gabriel is a strong and healthy young man overall. He goes to the doctor regular with the help of

health insurance. He is very athletic with amazing hand eye coordination and motor skills that are fitting

for his age group. Gabriel loves to rock climb and spends most Saturdays practicing with friends. He was

able to quickly grasp the concept and some of the necessary skills needed to scale the difficult climbs.

Gabriel also participates in archery once a week on Tuesdays. He has been taking part in this activity

since he was a freshman in high school. He truly enjoys the challenge it brings and the science behind

drawing that arrow back in is bow.

Cognitive Development

Gabriel is a freshman currently attending Boise State University for the fall and spring semester.

He is currently taking all his general education classes that pertain to his major. He is majoring in

Biomedical Engineering, so for example he is required to take calculus and chemistry. He is intellectually

above the majority of his classmates. However, because of his ADHD and Autism he is emotionally

behind the majority of his peers. Gabriel requires an Individualized Education Program IEP to

accommodate to all his needs. He is accommodations such as an extended amount of time to complete

assignments and a time frame from which he is able to step out of class if he became overstimulated.
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Gabriel is provided with all of the tools he needs to be successful with in school. Since being diagnosed

having an IEP has help him complete assignment a lot easier. He truly just wants to be treated like every

other student on campus, and the program allows for that to happen.

Gabriel is able to freely think about and answer all questions on his own. He is able to effectively

communicate his understanding of subjects related to school. He shows all understanding of math,

English, and science subjects. He able to participate in all class activities that require for both an hands

on approach or more communication based style. Educators have found that Gabriel is more productive

when he is able to work at his own pace and doesn’t have to work with others. Gabriel has what is called

eidetic memory. Eidetic memory is described as having the ability to recall an image from memory with

high accuracy for a brief period after seeing it only once. Gabriel is able to see a problem or an image

just once and will remember it for a longer period of time compared to his peers.

Socio-emotional Development

Gabriel growing up really struggled to make friends. He was unable to make an emotional

connection to any of his peers. However, as he has gotten older, he has been able create safe and

welcoming relationships with many people. His friend group is a very diverse group of young adults all

similar to his age. They hold many of the same interests and values as he does. Although he isn’t able to

comprehend the emotions of his peers, he is aware that they are there. He does is very best to recognize

the emotions of the people around him. However, it has remained a challenge for the majority of his

life. When Gabriel hangs out with his friends, they spend most of their time discussing video games. His

friends explain and discuss the logical meaning behind some of their feelings to include Gabriel in their

struggles. His friends have allowed him to become more socially aware and become a more openminded

person.
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Gabriel plans on continuing his education until he gets his doctorate in biomedical engineering.

However, he is afraid that his disabilities will hold him back and create bigger challenges than he can

overcome. Gabriel is extremely aware that he is different than the people around him however, he

doesn’t understand why. Gabriel gets very frustrated at his differences; he wants to be able to see and

address the world like the people around him. He stated that he really wants to be able to understand

when someone is feeling sad or hurt, he wants to be able to identify when he is feeling a certain aware.

Gabriel lacks the ability to be self-aware, but he craves to be able to understand and regulate his own

emotions like his peers.

Summary of major Findings

The summary of my findings concludes that physically and intellectually Gabriel is an ordinary

young man. Although Gabriel is able to understand any and all logically placed information, he does not

have the emotional understanding like an average adolescent his age might have. However, besides that

Gabriel is healthy physically and emotionally healthy. School can be an extreme stressor for Gabriel, due

to getting overstimulated by the business of the people around him. After a long internal debate, I feel

that I can accurately say that Gabriel is operating in the last stage of Jean Piaget’s stages for cognitive

development. The last stage is called the Formal Operational Stage. As adolescents enter this stage,

they are now able to process information in an abstract way, while being able to combine and classify

specific terms while critically thinking. He demonstrates the ability to deal with hypothetical problems

while being able to follow the outline of an argument without needing an example. Although Gabriel is

at the last stage of Piaget’s cognitive development theory, I feel that he is less developed in Abraham

Maslow’s theory. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory suggests that individuals must fulfill the lower

levels in order to expand or grow the higher levels. Gabriel is able to independently think and process

information on his own. However, because he is unable to understand or regulate his emotions he tends
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to struggle with is self-esteem and because of that he is unable to fully understand and grow in the self-

actualization portion. Maslow’s states that all parts are needed to grow and develop more as an

individual. Gabriel is unable to fully understand not only the emotions of other but the emotions he has

as well. I believe that Gabriel becomes very self-conscious that his different from his peers and fears that

these differences will hinder his success in the future. Gabriel not only struggles with understand

emotional he has an extremely difficult time concentrating. In his classes teachers provided him with

one task to complete at a time. With doing so Gabriel see is as a challenge of how many assignments can

he complete, and it allows him to spend more time focused on the activity. Gabriel tends to get distract

extremely easily and gets lost in stress of the number of assignments that need to be completed.

Educators have found that he is able to get more done when the assignment s are broken up into

sections. I was able to observe the differences between when teachers supplied him with too many

assignments v.s. one at a time. I was shocked by the number of assignments that were completed when

given one at a time verses all of them. When he was given all of the assignments, he got extremely

frustrated and then refused to complete anymore than he had. I believe this is because Gabriel had

gotten over stimulated with the amount of information in front of him. I noticed that some teachers

would unintentionally exclude Gabriel from activities that would require more work or required a

student to have multiple worksheets. They did so not to exclude him but to lower the chances of him

getting overwhelmed. However, I feel that doing so it took away a chance for Gabriel to learn to work

better in group situations.

Gabriel is learning how to support himself, which is difficult for someone without autism.

However, he faces an added struggle, that requires him to have to process and think through situations

others do not have to. I know that it will be challenging for Gabriel as he learns how to manage his time,

environment, and emotions. However, I feel that he will soon be able to completely support him self like
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his peers. My wish for him is that he stops seeing his differences as something to frown upon, but

instead something to embrace.

Reference Page

Mcleod, S. 2022. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Retrieved from:

https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html

Mcleod, S. 2022. Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development. Retrieved from:

https://www.simplypsychology.org/piaget.html