Autistic Adults Show Transient Cardiac Slowing in Response to Both Social and Non-Social Negative Feedback

Abstract

Autistic people frequently experience negative judgements from non-autistic people, often fuelled by misconceptions that autistic people lack empathy. Understanding responses to negative social judgement among autistic people is crucial because of the potential negative impact on wellbeing and future interactions. We investigated behavioural and psychophysiological indices of social rejection in 20 autistic (AUT; 11 males) and 40 non-autistic (N-AUT; 21 males) university students. Participants completed the Social Judgement Task (SJT) where they predicted whether they were liked by another person, then received feedback on whether those evaluations were correct. Participants also completed an Age Judgement Task (AJT) where they estimated the age of the pictured person. The AUT group had lower positive expectation scores, meaning less tendency to predict being liked. The N-AUT group showed a transient cardiac slowing to unexpected social rejection, supporting the role of parasympathetic nervous system in regulating social rejection. In contrast, the AUT group did not differentiate between unexpected social rejection in the SJT and general negative feedback in the AJT. In both groups, higher social anxiety predicted greater tendency to anticipate rejection from others. These findings support Milton’s double empathy theory by showing the role of non-autistic community in the experiences of autistic people.