Effects of Diagnostic Information,Autism Knowledge,Contact,and Stigma on People’s Ability to Read Autistic Individuals

Abstract

Non-autistic individuals find it difficult to read the behaviour of autistic people in comparison to non-autistic others. We investigated whether non-autistic people’s ability to read autistic individuals is improved by providing diagnostic information, and whether this ability is associated with a person’s knowledge about autism, prior contact with autistic people, and autism stigma. Participants (N = 128) viewed videos that were taken from a previous study. These showed autistic and non-autistic individuals reacting to events enacted by the researcher, and participants were asked to infer what event had taken place. Videos were presented either with no diagnostic information, a correct diagnostic label, or an incorrect label (autistic individuals labelled as non-autistic and vice versa). Autism knowledge, contact with autistic people, and autism stigma were measured by questionnaires. Participants performed less well for videos of autistic than non-autistic others. Diagnostic information had little impact on performance, although labelling non-autistic individuals as autistic reduced accuracy. Autism knowledge, contact with autistic people, and autism stigma were not associated with relative strength in interpreting the behaviour of autistic individuals. We conclude it might be difficult to train people to read autistic people’s non-verbal behaviour more effectively; instead, intervention might focus on raising awareness of this issue.

Lay Abstract

Recent research has shown that non-autistic people are prone to misinterpreting the behaviour of autistic individuals, which may contribute to the difficulties autistic people often experience during social interactions. This suggests that interventions should identify ways to improve other people’s ability to interpret autistic people’s behaviour. However, little is known about what circumstances may improve non-autistic people’s ability to read autistic others. This study investigated whether telling people that someone is autistic would improve their ability to interpret the behaviour of that person. We also investigated whether having more knowledge about autism, having previous contact with autistic people, or holding stigmatic attitudes about autism relates to this ability. The researchers used video clips that were recorded for a previous study. They showed autistic and non-autistic people reacting to aspects of the researchers’ behaviour, such as being told a joke or paid a compliment. Participants’ task was to watch the video clips and infer what the person in each video was reacting to and accuracy in doing so was recorded. The videos were presented with either no diagnostic information or with a diagnostic label alongside the video, which was either correct or inaccurate (labelling autistic individuals as non-autistic and vice versa). We used questionnaires to assess participants’ autism knowledge, previous contact with autistic people, and autism stigma. We found that participants had more difficulty judging the reactions of autistic individuals than the non-autistic individuals. Telling participants that a person was autistic did not make people better at interpreting their behaviour, although labelling non-autistic participants as autistic reduced accuracy. Knowledge about autism, previous contact with autistic people, and autism stigma did not relate to a person’s ability to interpret autistic people’s behaviour. This suggests that it may not be easy to create interventions to improve people’s ability to interpret the behaviour of autistic others. Intervention might focus on raising awareness of the need to avoid making assumptions based on the non-verbal behaviour of autistic people.