Emotional processing of ironic vs. literal criticism in autistic and non-autistic adults: Evidence from eye-tracking

Typically developing (TD) adults are able to keep track of story characters’ emotional states online while reading. Filik et al. (2017) showed that initially, participants expected the victim to be more hurt by ironic comments than literal, but later considered them less hurtful; ironic comments were regarded as more amusing. We examined these processes in autistic adults, since previous research has demonstrated socio-emotional difficulties among autistic people, which may lead to problems processing irony and its related emotional processes despite an intact ability to integrate language in context. We recorded eye movements from autistic and non-autistic adults while they read narratives in which a character (the victim) was either criticised in an ironic or a literal manner by another character (the protagonist). A target sentence then either described the victim as feeling hurt/amused by the comment, or the protagonist as having intended to hurt/amused the victim by making the comment. Results from the non-autistic adults broadly replicated the key findings from Filik et al. (2017), supporting the two-stage account. Importantly, the autistic adults did not show comparable two-stage processing of ironic language; they did not differentiate between the emotional responses for victims or protagonists following ironic vs. literal criticism. These findings suggest that autistic people experience a specific difficulty taking into account other peoples’ communicative intentions (i.e. infer their mental state) to appropriately anticipate emotional responses to an ironic comment. We discuss how these difficulties might link to atypical socio-emotional processing in autism, and the ability to maintain successful real-life social interactions.

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Interviewing autistic adults: Adaptations to support recall in police, employment, and healthcare interviews

Autism ◽

10.1177/1362361320909174 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 24 (6) ◽

pp. 1506-1520 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Jade Eloise Norris ◽

Laura Crane ◽

Katie Maras

Keyword(s):

Mental Health ◽

Criminal Justice ◽

Criminal Justice System ◽

Justice System ◽

Semantic Knowledge ◽

Typically Developing ◽

Employment Interviews ◽

Open Questions ◽

Autistic People ◽

Autistic Adults

Recalling specific past experiences is critical for most formal social interactions, including when being interviewed for employment, as a witness or defendant in the criminal justice system, or as a patient during a clinical consultation. Such interviews can be difficult for autistic adults under standard open questioning, yet applied research into effective methods to facilitate autistic adults’ recall is only recently beginning to emerge. The current study tested the efficacy of different prompting techniques to support autistic adults’ recall of specific personal memories; 30 autistic and 30 typically developing adults (intelligence quotients > 85) were asked to recall specific instances from their past, relevant to criminal justice system, healthcare, and employment interviews. Questions comprised ‘open questions’, ‘semantic prompting’ (where semantic knowledge was used to prompt specific episodic retrieval) and ‘visual–verbal prompting’ (a pie-diagram with prompts to recall specific details, for example, who, what, and where). Half the participants received the questions in advance. Consistent with previous research, autistic participants reported memories with reduced specificity. For both groups, visual–verbal prompting support improved specificity and episodic relevance, while semantic prompting also aided recall for employment questions (but not health or criminal justice system). Findings offer new practical insight for interviewers to facilitate communication with typically developing and autistic adults. Lay abstract During many types of interviews (e.g. in employment, with the police, and in healthcare), we need to recall detailed memories of specific events, which can be difficult for autistic people in response to commonly used questions. This is especially because these tend to be open questions (i.e. very broad). Autistic people have disproportionately high rates of physical and mental health conditions, are more likely to interact with police, and are the most underemployed disability group. However, interviewers are often unsure about how to adapt their communication for autistic people. Our research tested whether different types of prompts enabled autistic people to recall specific memories (memories of a single event within one day). Participants were asked about situations relating to witnessing a crime (e.g. at the bank), physical or mental health scenarios and employment interviews (e.g. a time you’ve met a deadline). We tested the following: Open questions: basic questions only (e.g. ‘tell me about a time you went to the cinema’), Semantic prompting: a general prompt (e.g. ‘do you enjoy going to the cinema?’) before asking for a specific instance (‘tell me about a time you went to the cinema?’), Visual–verbal prompting: asking participants to recall when it happened, who was there, the actions that occurred, the setting, and any objects. With visual–verbal prompting, autistic and typically developing participants’ memories were more specific and detailed. Semantic prompting was also effective for employment questions. Our study shows that autistic people can recall specific memories when they are appropriately prompted. Visual–verbal prompting may be effective across different situations.

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Autistic adults anticipate and integrate meaning based on the speaker’s voice: Evidence from eye-tracking and event-related potentials

10.31234/osf.io/g362e ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Mahsa Barzy ◽

Heather Jane Ferguson ◽

David Williams ◽

Jo Black

Keyword(s):

Event Related Potentials ◽

Typically Developing ◽

Intended Meaning ◽

Speaker Meaning ◽

Autistic People ◽

Processing Bias ◽

Related Potentials ◽

Autistic Adults ◽

The Voice ◽

Inconsistent Objects

Typically developing (TD) individuals rapidly integrate information about a speaker and their intended meaning while processing sentences online. We examined whether the same processes are activated in autistic adults, and tested their timecourse in two pre-registered experiments. Experiment 1 employed the visual world paradigm. Participants listened to sentences where the speaker’s voice and message were either consistent or inconsistent (e.g. “When we go shopping, I usually look for my favourite wine”, spoken by an adult or a child), and concurrently viewed visual scenes including consistent and inconsistent objects (e.g. wine and sweets). All participants were slower to select the mentioned object in the inconsistent condition. Importantly, eye movements showed a visual bias towards the voice-consistent object, well before hearing the disambiguating word, showing that autistic adults rapidly use the speaker’s voice to anticipate the intended meaning. However, this target bias emerged earlier in the TD group compared to the autism group (2240ms vs 1800ms before disambiguation). Experiment 2 recorded ERPs to explore speaker-meaning integration processes. Participants listened to sentences as described above, and ERPs were time-locked to the onset of the target word. A control condition included a semantic anomaly. Results revealed an enhanced N400 for inconsistent speaker-meaning sentences that was comparable to that elicited by anomalous sentences, in both groups. Overall, contrary to research that has characterised autism in terms of a local processing bias and pragmatic dysfunction, autistic people were unimpaired at integrating multiple modalities of linguistic information, and were comparably sensitive to speaker-meaning inconsistency effects.

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Outcomes of real-world social interaction for autistic adults paired with autistic compared to typically developing partners

Autism ◽

10.1177/1362361319892701 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 24 (5) ◽

pp. 1067-1080 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Kerrianne E Morrison ◽

Kilee M DeBrabander ◽

Desiree R Jones ◽

Daniel J Faso ◽

Robert A Ackerman ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Social Interaction ◽

Real World ◽

Social Communication ◽

Blind Spot ◽

Autism Spectrum ◽

Typically Developing ◽

Interaction Styles ◽

Autistic People ◽

Autistic Adults

Differences in social communication and interaction styles between autistic and typically developing have been studied in isolation and not in the context of real-world social interaction. The current study addresses this “blind spot” by examining whether real-world social interaction quality for autistic adults differs when interacting with typically developing relative to autistic partners. Participants (67 autism spectrum disorder, 58 typically developing) were assigned to one of three dyadic partnerships (autism–autism: n = 22; typically developing–typically developing: n = 23; autism–typically developing: n = 25; 55 complete dyads, 15 partial dyads) in which they completed a 5-min unstructured conversation with an unfamiliar person and then assessed the quality of the interaction and their impressions of their partner. Although autistic adults were rated as more awkward, less attractive, and less socially warm than typically developing adults by both typically developing and autistic partners, only typically developing adults expressed greater interest in future interactions with typically developing relative to autistic partners. In contrast, autistic participants trended toward an interaction preference for other autistic adults and reported disclosing more about themselves to autistic compared to typically developing partners. These results suggest that social affiliation may increase for autistic adults when partnered with other autistic people, and support reframing social interaction difficulties in autism as a relational rather than an individual impairment.

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Perspective influences eye movements during real-life conversation: Mentalising about self versus others in autism

Autism ◽

10.1177/1362361320936820 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 24 (8) ◽

pp. 2153-2165

Author(s):

Mahsa Barzy ◽

Heather J Ferguson ◽

David M Williams

Keyword(s):

Eye Movements ◽

Social Information ◽

Real Life ◽

Social Background ◽

Mental States ◽

Social Attention ◽

Developmental Trajectory ◽

Future Research ◽

Typically Developing ◽

Autistic Adults

Social-communication is profoundly impaired among autistic individuals. Difficulties representing others’ mental states have been linked to modulations of gaze and speech, which have also been shown to be impaired in autism. Despite these observed impairments in ‘real-world’ communicative settings, research has mostly focused on lab-based experiments, where the language is highly structured. In a pre-registered experiment, we recorded eye movements and verbal responses while adults ( N = 50) engaged in a real-life conversation. Using a novel approach, we also manipulated the perspective that participants adopted by asking them questions that were related to the self, a familiar other, or an unfamiliar other. Results replicated previous work, showing reduced attention to socially relevant information among autistic participants (i.e. less time looking at the experimenter’s face and more time looking around the background), compared to typically developing controls. Importantly, perspective modulated social attention in both groups; talking about an unfamiliar other reduced attention to potentially distracting or resource-demanding social information and increased looks to non-social background. Social attention did not differ between self and familiar other contexts, reflecting greater shared knowledge for familiar/similar others. Autistic participants spent more time looking at the background when talking about an unfamiliar other versus themselves. Future research should investigate the developmental trajectory of this effect and the cognitive mechanisms underlying it. Lay abstract Previous lab-based studies suggest that autistic individuals are less attentive to social aspects of their environment. In our study, we recorded the eye movements of autistic and typically developing adults while they engaged in a real-life social interaction with a partner. Results showed that autistic adults were less likely than typically developing adults to look at the experimenter’s face, and instead were more likely to look at the background. Moreover, the perspective that was adopted in the conversation (talking about self versus others) modulated the patterns of eye movements in autistic and non-autistic adults. Overall, people spent less time looking at their conversation partner’s eyes and face and more time looking at the background, when talking about an unfamiliar other compared to when talking about themselves. This pattern was magnified among autistic adults. We conclude that allocating attention to social information during conversation is cognitively effortful, but this can be mitigated when talking about a topic that is familiar to them.

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Emotional Responses to Images of Death

OMEGA - Journal of Death and Dying ◽

10.1177/0030222815610955 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 72 (3) ◽

pp. 191-209 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Celia Marti-Garcia ◽

M. Paz Garcia-Caro ◽

Francisco Cruz-Quintana ◽

Jacqueline Schmidt-RioValle ◽

Miguel Perez-Garcia

Keyword(s):

End Of Life ◽

Emotional Response ◽

Emotional Processing ◽

Emotional Responses ◽

Emotional States ◽

Two Dimensional ◽

Dimensional Model ◽

Adaptive Value ◽

Two Dimensional Model ◽

Specific Emotion

In the context of emotional states occurring during end-of-life processes, an understanding of emotional processing when facing stimuli associated with death would inform the study of whether these stimuli constitute a specific emotion schema whose adaptive value differs from the adaptive value of other negative and unpleasant stimuli. We investigated emotional processing when facing images of death and characterized this emotional processing according to the two-dimensional model of Peter Lang. For this purpose, a set of images of death was built and characterized along the dimensions of valence, arousal, and dominance. The degree of suffering portrayed in each image was also categorized as high, medium, or low. We found that images of death cause an emotional response that differs from the response to other types of unpleasant images and that such processing depends on the degree of suffering portrayed in the image.

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COVID-19, social isolation and the mental health of autistic people and their families: A qualitative study

Autism ◽

10.1177/13623613211035936 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 136236132110359

Author(s):

Elizabeth Pellicano ◽

Simon Brett ◽

Jacquiline den Houting ◽

Melanie Heyworth ◽

Iliana Magiati ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Mental Health ◽

Young People ◽

Social Isolation ◽

Real Life ◽

Social Contact ◽

Negative Consequences ◽

Autistic Children ◽

Structured Interviews ◽

Autistic People ◽

Autistic Adults

The COVID-19 pandemic and its policy responses have had a detrimental effect on millions of people’s mental health. Here, we investigate its impact on autistic people and their families using qualitative methods. Specifically, we addressed: how did autistic people experience an increase in social isolation during the initial lockdown? And how was their mental health impacted by lockdown? Autistic and non-autistic researchers conducted 144 semi-structured interviews with autistic adults (n = 44), parents of autistic children (n = 84) including autistic parents and autistic young people (n = 16). We deployed thematic analysis to identify key themes. The enhanced social isolation accompanying the pandemic had a serious and damaging impact on autistic people’s mental health and subjective wellbeing. They spoke of intensely missing friends and more incidental forms of social connection. They also reported intense dissatisfaction with the substitution of embodied, person-to-person connection in health services by online/telephone-based alternatives, sometimes accompanied by serious negative consequences. These findings reveal the fundamental importance of supporting autistic people to maintain direct and incidental social contact during the pandemic and beyond. They speak against established theories that downplay autistic people’s need for human connection and the extent to which they have been affected by social isolation during lockdowns. Lay abstract In this study, we show that autistic people and their families have found it very difficult to deal with the lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic. Autistic and non-autistic researchers spoke to 144 people, including 44 autistic adults, 84 parents of autistic children and 16 autistic young people (12–18 years old). We asked them about their everyday lives and mental health during lockdown. People told us that they enjoyed having fewer obligations and demands compared to pre-COVID-19 life. They felt that life was quieter and calmer. But people also told us again and again how much they missed meeting people in real life, especially their friends, and their therapists and support workers. People told us that their mental health suffered because they did not have contact with their friends and services. Importantly, many people (including researchers) think that autistic people do not want friends or to be around people. But our results show that is not true. Many autistic people do want friends and to be around other people. Some people’s mental health has been damaged by not being able to see people during COVID-19. Autistic people need support in many areas of life so they can keep socialising and seeing their friends even through difficult times, like pandemics.

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Neurodiversity, Quality of Life, and Autistic Adults: Shifting Research and Professional Focuses onto Real-Life Challenges

Disability Studies Quarterly ◽

10.18061/dsq.v30i1.1069 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 30 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 54

Author(s):

Scott Michael Robertson

Keyword(s):

Quality Of Life ◽

Real Life ◽

Font Size ◽

Human Diversity ◽

Deficit Model ◽

Life Challenges ◽

Autistic People ◽

Strengths And Difficulties ◽

Autistic Adults

This article examines challenges to the quality of life experienced by autistic adults. The author, who is an autistic researcher, first shares how a neurodiversity perspective offers an important alternative to the deficit model of autism. Whereas the deficit model portrays autistic people as ill, broken, and in need of fixing, the neurodiversity perspective portrays it as a form of human diversity with associated strengths and difficulties. The article’s discussion then shifts to presenting Schalock’s (2000) quality of life framework as a neurodiversity-compatible lens through which domains of quality of life can be viewed. The article analyzes in detail these core domains in relation to the lives of autistic adults. The author suggests that a collaborative approach between professionals/researchers and autistic adults is needed to develop meaningful solutions to these challenges, and he presents possibilities for collaboration. KeywordsAutism, Neurodiversity, Quality of life, Autistic Adults

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Neuropsychology in the Real World

Zeitschrift für Neuropsychologie ◽

10.1024/1016-264x/a000139 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 25 (4) ◽

pp. 233-238 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Martin Peper ◽

Simone N. Loeffler

Keyword(s):

Neuropsychological Assessment ◽

Real World ◽

Ecological Validity ◽

Real Life ◽

Emotional States ◽

Context Sensitive ◽

Traditional Assessment ◽

Life Data ◽

Real Life Data ◽

Assessment And Treatment

Current ambulatory technologies are highly relevant for neuropsychological assessment and treatment as they provide a gateway to real life data. Ambulatory assessment of cognitive complaints, skills and emotional states in natural contexts provides information that has a greater ecological validity than traditional assessment approaches. This issue presents an overview of current technological and methodological innovations, opportunities, problems and limitations of these methods designed for the context-sensitive measurement of cognitive, emotional and behavioral function. The usefulness of selected ambulatory approaches is demonstrated and their relevance for an ecologically valid neuropsychology is highlighted.

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Camouflaging in non-autistic adults is associated with poorer mental health

10.31234/osf.io/myp4g ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Mark Somerville ◽

Sarah E. MacPherson ◽

Sue Fletcher-Watson

Keyword(s):

Mental Health ◽

Executive Function ◽

Autistic Traits ◽

Self Report ◽

Linear Regression Models ◽

Mental Health Symptoms ◽

Health Symptoms ◽

Autistic People ◽

Autistic Adults ◽

The Relationship

Camouflaging is a frequently reported behaviour in autistic people, which entails the use of strategies to compensate for and mask autistic traits in social situations. Camouflaging is associated with poor mental health in autistic people. This study examined the manifestation of camouflaging in a non-autistic sample, examining the relationship between autistic traits, camouflaging, and mental health. In addition, the role of executive functions as a mechanism underpinning camouflaging was explored. Sixty-three non-autistic adults completed standardised self-report questionnaires which measured: autistic traits, mental health symptoms, and camouflaging behaviours. In addition, a subset (n=51) completed three tests of executive function measuring inhibition, working memory, and set-shifting. Multiple linear regression models were used to analyse data. Results indicated that autistic traits are not associated with mental health symptoms when controlling for camouflaging, and camouflaging predicted increased mental health symptoms. Camouflaging did not correlate with any measure of executive function. These findings have implications for understanding the relationship between autistic traits and mental health in non-autistic people and add to the growing development of theory and knowledge about the mechanism and effects of camouflaging.

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Mental health correlates and potential childhood predictors for the wish to be of the opposite sex in young autistic adults

Autism ◽

10.1177/13623613211024098 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 136236132110240

Author(s):

Jung-Chi Chang ◽

Meng-Chuan Lai ◽

Yueh-Ming Tai ◽

Susan Shur-Fen Gau

Keyword(s):

Mental Health ◽

Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽

Autism Spectrum ◽

Spectrum Disorder ◽

Typically Developing ◽

Item Endorsement ◽

Opposite Sex ◽

Autistic Adults

Cross-sectional research has demonstrated the overrepresentation of gender dysphoria in children and adults with autism spectrum disorder. However, the predictors and underlying mechanisms of this co-occurrence remain unclear. This follow-up study aimed to explore baseline (childhood/adolescence) predictors for the follow-up (adulthood) self-reported wish to be of the opposite sex and to investigate its mental health correlates in a sample of 88 autistic individuals as compared with 42 typically developing controls. An item on the Adult Self-Report Inventory-4, “I wish I was the opposite sex,” was used. We compared mental health symptoms between adults with and without this item endorsement. We used prediction models to explore family and autism-related predictors in childhood/adolescence to endorse this item in adulthood. There were more adults endorsing the item in the autism spectrum disorder group compared with the typically developing group. Autistic adults who endorsed the item experienced more mental health challenges, more bullying victimization, more suicidal ideations, and worse quality of life. Lower parent-reported family support and more stereotyped/repetitive behaviors during childhood/adolescence predicted the self-reported wish to be of the opposite sex in adulthood in autistic individuals. It is necessary to raise more attention to gender development and related mental health impact in autistic individuals. Lay abstract Autistic people/people with autism spectrum disorder are more likely to experience gender dysphoria. However, the possible longitudinal predictors and underlying mechanisms of this co-occurrence are unclear. To fill this knowledge gap, we assessed 88 people with autism spectrum disorder and 42 typically developing individuals at their average ages of 13.0 (baseline, childhood/adolescence) and 20.2 years old (follow-up, adulthood). At follow-up, their endorsement on the item “I wish I was the opposite sex” was used to evaluate gender dysphoric symptoms. We compared mental health symptoms between adults with and without this item endorsement at the follow-up assessment. We explored parent-reported family and autism characteristics-related predictors in childhood/adolescence to this item endorsement in adulthood. We found that more autistic adults reported the wish to be of the opposite sex than did typically developing individuals. Autistic adults who endorsed this item experienced more mental health challenges, more school bullying and cyberbullying, more suicidal ideation, and worse quality of life. Moreover, parent-reported lower family support and more stereotyped/repetitive behaviors during childhood/adolescence predicted the self-reported wish to be of the opposite sex in adulthood in autistic individuals. More attention and support should be provided to autistic people regarding gender development and related mental health and quality of life impact, especially during the transition period to young adulthood.

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