A novel context-discrepancy assessment of impression management facets in autistic and non-autistic adults: an initial validation.

Everyone did the job interview first and the friendly call second, so the researchers cannot tell how much of the change came from the task order itself (tiredness after the stressful task, or getting used to the camera and procedure). Only 48 people took part, from one city, mostly assigned female at birth and mostly university educated. The study was too small to test whether men and women respond differently, and race and culture were not examined at all. The open-text answers about what participants were monitoring were coded by two non-autistic researchers only. Everyone was a verbal adult without intellectual disability, so nothing here speaks to minimally speaking people. The links between personality traits and the facets come from an exploratory analysis; the authors call them preliminary signposts rather than conclusions. The setting was a laboratory task with a scripted prompt and a camera, not a real interview or a real relationship.

The study was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health Foundation. The supplied text names no other funder and reports no individual conflicts of interest, and no company selling a treatment or an assessment was involved.

Do not read this as proof that camouflaging causes anxiety, or that autistic adults are worse at managing how they come across. Everyone did the stressful job-interview task first and the relaxed video call second, in a sample of 48, so the extra inauthenticity and anxiety autistic adults reported may reflect the order of the tasks or simply a stronger reaction to the same stressor. This was a one-off laboratory study, not a test of any treatment.