Is There a Link Between Autistic People Being Perceived Unfavorably and Having a Mind That Is Difficult to Read?
Rabi Samil Alkhaldi, Elizabeth Sheppard, Peter Mitchell
PMID 31197637WHAT IT FOUND
Autistic people are rated less favorably by others partly because they are harder to read.
This link held even when viewers knew the social situation. Being difficult to interpret may drive negative first impressions more than the diagnosis itself.
Key findings
01Autistic targets were rated significantly less socially favorable than non-autistic targets, even when perceivers did not know who was autistic.
02There is a positive correlation between how 'readable' a person's behavior is and how favorably they are perceived, independent of their clinical diagnosis.
03Providing context about the social scenario did not eliminate the negative bias against autistic targets; they were still rated less favorably than non-autistic targets in three of four scenarios.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study used short video clips (mean 7.22 seconds) without sound, which may not reflect complex, real-world interactions. All targets were male and Caucasian, so findings may not generalize to autistic women or people of other ethnicities. The perceivers were typically developing adults, which may differ from how children or other groups perceive autistic peers. The study is correlational; it does not prove that being hard to read causes negative perceptions, only that they are linked.
Declared interests
The study was funded by the Saudi Arabia Cultural Bureau in London. The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that autistic people are inherently less likable or that their social difficulties are due to poor social skills alone. The study shows that the link between negative perception and autism is mediated by how difficult they are to 'read'. This suggests the problem lies in the mismatch between the autistic person's signals and the neurotypical perceiver's expectations, not necessarily a deficit in the autistic person.