Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, Alexandra House, 17-19 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AZ, UK.
Mol Autism. 2023 Sep 6;14(1):33. doi: 10.1186/s13229-023-00561-6.
Autistic people show poor processing of social signals (i.e. about the social world). But how do they learn via social interaction?
68 neurotypical adults and 60 autistic adults learned about obscure items (e.g. exotic animals) over Zoom (i) in a live video-call with the teacher, (ii) from a recorded learner-teacher interaction video and (iii) from a recorded teacher-alone video. Data were analysed via analysis of variance and multi-level regression models.
Live teaching provided the most optimal learning condition, with no difference between groups. Enjoyment was the strongest predictor of learning: both groups enjoyed the live interaction significantly more than other condition and reported similar anxiety levels across conditions.
Some of the autistic participants were self-diagnosed-however, further analysis where these participants were excluded showed the same results. Recruiting participants over online platforms may have introduced bias in our sample. Future work should investigate learning in social contexts via diverse sources (e.g. schools).
These findings advocate for a distinction between learning about the social versus learning via the social: cognitive models of autism should be revisited to consider social interaction not just as a puzzle to decode but rather a medium through which people, including neuro-diverse groups, learn about the world around them. Trial registration Part of this work has been pre-registered before data collection https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/5PGA3.
自闭症患者在处理社会信号（即关于社交世界的信号）方面表现不佳。但是，他们如何通过社交互动来学习呢？
68 名神经典型成年人和 60 名自闭症成年人通过 Zoom 在线学习平台（i）在与教师的实时视频通话中，（ii）在记录的学习者-教师互动视频中，以及（iii）在记录的教师单独视频中，学习关于晦涩物品（例如异国动物）的知识。通过方差分析和多层次回归模型分析数据。
现场教学提供了最佳的学习条件，两组之间没有差异。学习的动机主要是兴趣：两组都比其他条件更喜欢现场互动，并且在不同条件下报告的焦虑水平相似。
一些自闭症参与者是自我诊断的——然而，在排除这些参与者的进一步分析中，结果相同。通过在线平台招募参与者可能会导致我们的样本存在偏差。未来的研究应该通过多种来源（例如学校）来调查社交情境中的学习。
这些发现支持区分学习社交知识和通过社交学习：自闭症的认知模型应该重新审视，不仅要将社交互动视为解码的难题，还要将其视为人们（包括神经多样性群体）了解周围世界的媒介。试验注册 这项工作的一部分已经在数据收集之前进行了预注册 https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/5PGA3。
