CENTRE FOR RESEARCH IN AUTISM AND EDUCATION
Research to enhance the lives of autistic people
CRAE’s Brett Heasman published a podcast series about double-empathy and bridging the gap between autistic and non-autistic people. Brett talks with Kerrianne Morrison, Noah Sasson, Sue Fletcher-Watson, Catherine Crompton and Damian Milton about research in this area.
The podcasts are animated to make them more accessible and engaging for listeners! Check out the first episode here: bit.ly/DEpodcast
In 2018, Jaswal and Akhtar wrote a paper that questioned the assumption that autistic people are socially uninterested. They provided a compelling argument, explaining that this apparent lack of social motivation in autism was not consistent with how autistic people describe themselves, and did not recognise the many other reasons why autistic people may behave in unconventional ways. The paper has attracted comments from more than 30 scholars across many disciplines.
CRAE’s Brett Heasman and Alex Gillespie (The London School of Economics and Political Science – LSE) published their response, suggesting that by examining how autistic people appraise autistic behaviour, it can provide solutions to improving neurotypical-to-autistic interaction.
Read the original study here https://bit.ly/2ZevkOW and Brett’s and Alex’s full response here https://bit.ly/2LLSOI7
CRAE’s Brett Heasman has just published a study on how autistic people are perceived by neurotypical people. Brett’s research used a computer game where 255 neurotypical players either believed they were playing with an autistic or non-autistic player. This player was actually an artificial confederate that was programmed to behave the same way across all interactions.
When neurotypical players believed they were playing with an autistic person, they perceived them as more intelligent and useful than when they believed they were playing with a neurotypical person. Moreover, when the neurotypical players believed they were playing with an autistic person they over-estimated how helpful they were compared to their autistic counterpart in completing the game collaboratively.
This research concurs with existing reports that the label of autism has a positive effect on social perception, leading to a higher perception of intelligence. The findings also suggest that people may perceive themselves as more helpful to autistic people than they actually are in their behaviour and actions. These findings help to explain why diagnostic disclosure can still result in negative discrimination; hence why disclosure not always straightforward.
Read the full paper here: https://bit.ly/2ZyPCm5