Participants Over-Estimate How Helpful They Are in a Two-Player Game Scenario Toward an Artificial Confederate That Discloses a Diagnosis of Autism

Abstract

Research on how autistic people are perceived by neurotypical people indicates that disclosing a diagnosis leads to a positive discriminatory bias; however, autobiographical autistic accounts indicate that diagnostic disclosure often results in negative discriminatory behavior. We report on an exploratory study to compare people’s self-reported helping behavior with their actual helping behavior toward an assumed autistic collaborator. We led 255 participants to believe that they were interacting online with a real person to play Dyad3D, a maze navigation game where players must work together to open doors, and complete the levels. However, participants were actually playing with an artificial confederate (AC) that is programmed to behave the same way across all interactions. This design enabled us to manipulate the diagnostic status of the AC that participants received prior to collaboration across three conditions: no disclosure, dyslexia-disclosure, and autism-disclosure. We use this method to explore two research questions: (1) is Dyad3D viable in creating a simulated interaction that could deceive participants into believing they were collaborating with another human player online? and (2) what are the effects of disclosing an autism diagnosis on social perception and collaboration? Combined with a post-game questionnaire, we compared differences between diagnostic conditions and differences between self-reported behavior and actual behavior in the game. Our findings show that Dyad3D proved to be an efficient and viable method for creating a believable interaction (deception success rate >96%). Moreover, diagnostic disclosure of autism results in the AC being perceived as more intelligent and useful, but participants also perceived themselves to be more helpful toward the AC than they actually were. We evaluate the strengths and limitations of the current method and provide recommendations for future research. The source code for Dyad3D is freely available (CC-BY-NC 4.0) so that the study is reproducible and open to future adaptation.

Neurotype-Matching, but Not Being Autistic, Influences Self and Observer Ratings of Interpersonal Rapport

“…These biases against autistic individuals are formed quickly by non-autistic people, and do not change with increased exposure (Sasson et al, 2017). Non-autistic people overestimate how egocentric autistic family members are (Heasman and Gillespie, 2018), while also overestimating the helpfulness of their own behaviors toward autistic people (Heasman and Gillespie, 2019b). Taken together, this body of research provides evidence that autistic social difficulties may be in part due to the perceptions of, and judgments made by, non-autistic people.…”

“…Autistic people may feel more comfortable with other autistic people (Crompton et al, 2020a), and non-autistic people may feel more comfortable with other non-autistic people (Cage and Burton, 2019;DeBrabander et al, 2019) and this may be enhanced by being aware of the diagnostic status of the other person in the interaction. Being aware of the diagnostic status of the person with whom they were interacting may have changed participants' behavior, however, previous research has shown that when non-autistic people know that they are interacting with an autistic person, they attempt to behave in a helpful way (Heasman and Gillespie, 2019b), and sharing diagnostic information results in greater acceptance of autistic people (Sasson and Morrison, 2019). As such, it may be hypothesized that there may be an even larger effect on rapport between mixed and single neurotype pairs if participants were blind to the diagnostic status of their partner.…”

Autistic peer-to-peer information transfer is highly effective

“…Second, participants were aware of the diagnostic status of the person with whom they were interacting, which could have affected their behaviour. However, previous research has shown that when non-autistic people believe they are interacting with an autistic person, they attempt to behave in a helpful way ( Heasman & Gillespie, 2019b ), and sharing diagnostic information results in greater acceptance of autistic people ( Sasson & Morrison, 2017 ). As such, it may be hypothesised that an even larger effect would be found if participants were blind to the diagnostic status of the others in their diffusion chain.…”

‘I never realised everybody felt as happy as I do when I am around autistic people’: A thematic analysis of autistic adults’ relationships with autistic and neurotypical friends and family

“…This aligns with the double-empathy theory of autism which suggests that autistic and non-autistic people have a mutual difficulty in understanding and empathising with one another due to differences in how each person understands and experiences the world, rather than because of a communicative deficit on the part of the autistic person ( Milton, 2012 ). Neurotypical people have been shown to overestimate how ego-centric their autistic family members are ( Heasman & Gillespie, 2018 ), and overestimate how helpful they are to autistic people ( Heasman & Gillespie, 2019 ). Our findings suggest that this translates into real-world difficulties in interactions with neurotypical friends and family that may affect the mental health, well-being and self-esteem of autistic people.…”