O'Loghlen Jessica J, Lang Cathryne P
School of Applied Psychology, Griffith University, Mt Gravatt, Australia.
Autism Adulthood. 2024 Mar 1;6(1):60-71. doi: 10.1089/aut.2022.0094. Epub 2024 Feb 28.
Autistic traits have been linked with the use of social camouflaging behavior by non-autistic people. In addition, low social competence (i.e., poor social skills) has also been posited as a possible explanation for the use of social camouflaging by non-autistic people. In this study, we investigated the comparative influence of autistic traits and social competence on three components of social camouflaging (compensation, masking, and assimilation) in a sample of non-autistic adults.
Using a cross-sectional design, we recruited 284 undergraduate students (28.5% male; 69.7% female; 1.8% not specified) who reported that they had never been diagnosed with autism. Participants completed standardized measures assessing social camouflaging, autistic traits, social competence, and psychological distress via an online questionnaire.
We found that women reported greater use of social camouflaging, and greater social camouflaging use was associated with worse psychological distress. We also found that both social competence and autistic traits were associated with the use of social camouflaging, with higher autistic traits influencing camouflaging use to a greater degree than low social competence. Compared with the use of compensation- and assimilation-based social camouflaging, masking was the least well explained by the current predictors.
We conclude that social competence and autistic traits are important factors influencing the use of social camouflaging by non-autistic adults. However, there are other (unknown) factors that contribute to the use of each aspect of camouflaging by non-autistic individuals, and a deeper understanding of the individual motivations for social camouflaging use is still needed. In turn, this may allow for the development of psychosocial interventions to offset the need for social camouflaging and mitigate the negative psychological consequences often associated with its use.
自闭症特质与非自闭症患者使用社交伪装行为有关。此外，社交能力低下（即社交技能差）也被认为是解释非自闭症患者使用社交伪装行为的一个可能原因。在本研究中，我们调查了自闭症特质和社交能力对非自闭症成年人社交伪装的三个组成部分（补偿、掩饰和同化）的相对影响。
采用横断面设计，我们招募了284名本科生（28.5%为男性；69.7%为女性；1.8%未注明），他们报告自己从未被诊断患有自闭症。参与者通过在线问卷完成了评估社交伪装、自闭症特质、社交能力和心理困扰的标准化测量。
我们发现女性报告使用社交伪装的频率更高，且社交伪装使用频率越高与心理困扰越严重相关。我们还发现社交能力和自闭症特质都与社交伪装的使用有关，自闭症特质越高对伪装使用的影响程度大于社交能力低下。与基于补偿和同化的社交伪装使用相比，当前预测因素对掩饰的解释效果最差。
我们得出结论，社交能力和自闭症特质是影响非自闭症成年人使用社交伪装的重要因素。然而，还有其他（未知）因素导致非自闭症个体使用伪装的各个方面，仍需要更深入地了解社交伪装使用的个体动机。相应地，这可能有助于开发心理社会干预措施，以消除社交伪装的需求，并减轻通常与其使用相关的负面心理后果。
