Seeing it in others versus doing it yourself: Social desirability judgements and conversation production data from autistic and non-autistic children.

The study included only verbally fluent autistic and non-autistic children aged 9 to 13 who were matched on language and non-verbal reasoning, so it does not show what would happen for autistic children with intellectual disability or language impairment. All participants lived in one county in Southern England and most were White British, so the findings may not apply across cultures. The social judgement task used scripted conversations by child actors, not real peer conversations. Most sessions were done by Zoom because of COVID-19 restrictions, and parental recording problems meant response latencies were missing for 25% of the sample. Autistic community members were not involved in developing the studies. The study was not an intervention study, so it cannot show that changing conversational behaviour improves friendships or peer acceptance.

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest. The work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council, grant number 2444693.

Do not conclude that autistic children prefer off-topic or delayed conversation. Autistic and non-autistic children rated both behaviours less favourably, and they did not differ in those ratings. The study also did not find a group difference in measured response latencies.