The effect of diagnostic information, autism knowledge, contact and autism stigma on people's ability to read autistic others

Abstract

This study followed on from research by Sheppard et al. (2016) in which we found that non-autistic people are rather poor at reading the behaviour of autistic people. We investigated whether non-autistic people’s ability to read autistic individuals is influenced by providing diagnostic information, and by a person’s knowledge about autism, prior contact with autistic people, and autism stigma. Participants (N=128) viewed videos of autistic and non-autistic individuals reacting to events enacted by the researcher and inferred what event had taken place. Videos were presented either with no diagnostic information, a correct diagnostic label, or incorrect label (autistic individuals labelled as non-autistic and vice versa). Autism knowledge, contact with autistic people, and autism stigma were measured by questionnaires.