Veritable Untruths: Autistic Traits and the Processing of Deception.
Wei Li, Hannah Rohde, Martin Corley
PMID 34792711WHAT IT FOUND
Hesitation in speech made listeners doubt the speaker's truthfulness.
People with more autistic-like traits showed less early eye-movement bias toward the named object, suggesting different processing routes despite reaching similar final interpretations.
Key findings
01Participants were significantly more likely to click on the named target object when the utterance was fluent compared to when it contained disfluencies like 'uh'.
02Eye-tracking data showed that participants with higher Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ) scores tended to exhibit earlier biases toward the target object, indicating a difference in processing time-course related to autistic traits.
03There was no interaction between AQ scores and fluency in the final click outcome, meaning people with high and low autistic traits reached similar interpretations of truthfulness.
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 a general population sample with varying AQ scores, not a clinically diagnosed ASD group, so findings cannot be directly applied to individuals with autism. The AQ is a self-report measure and not a diagnostic tool; participants were not screened for other conditions. The task involved pre-recorded, artificial speech in a game context, which may not fully reflect natural conversation dynamics. The sample size was relatively small (62 participants), and the effect on eye movements was observed in a specific time window.
Declared interests
No specific funding sources or conflicts of interest are declared in the provided text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that individuals with high AQ scores or autism understand deception differently in terms of final outcome. The study found that while their eye movements suggested a different processing route, their final interpretations of truthfulness were similar to those with low AQ scores.