Less Negative Implicit Attitudes Toward Autism Spectrum Disorder in University Students: A Comparison with Physical Disabilities.
Susumu Yokota, Mari Tanaka
PMID 36243788WHAT IT FOUND
Japanese university students showed negative implicit attitudes toward autism and physical disabilities, while reporting positive explicit attitudes.
The physical disability test produced longer reaction times. Explicit answers were related to wanting to look good, but implicit responses were not.
Key findings
01Implicit attitudes toward autism and physical disabilities were negative, and reaction times were longer for physical disabilities than autism.
02Explicit attitudes toward autism and physical disabilities were positive and did not differ between the two disabilities.
03Explicit attitudes were related to social desirability, but implicit attitudes were not.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
The sample was small and limited to 63 Japanese university students without disabilities. Ten participants did not provide social desirability scores, so those analyses used 53 participants. Knowledge was measured with one subjective question, not a factual test of autism or disability knowledge. Only eight participants had no contact with a person with a disability, which limited comparisons between contacted and non-contacted groups. The study did not measure actual behavior toward people with autism or physical disabilities. Participants were told which pictures represented autism during the test, which may have influenced responses.
Declared interests
The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science funded the study.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that therapists hold these attitudes or that autism stigma is lower than physical disability stigma in clinical settings. The study measured university students' reaction times and self-reports, not clinician behavior.