Wilks Charlotte E H, Foster Sarah J, Dodd Michelle, Fletcher-Watson Sue, Lages Martin, Ropar Danielle, Sasson Noah J, Crompton Catherine J
Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2025 Aug 14;20(8):e0329825. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0329825. eCollection 2025.
Previous research has demonstrated that autistic people transmit verbal information as effectively as non-autistic people; however, when autistic and non-autistic people interact less information is transmitted. We tested whether these findings generalised to a task requiring the transmission of primarily visual information and examined how accurately participants self-assessed their performance. 310 adults (154 autistic) were allocated to one of three, six-person diffusion chain conditions: (i) autistic, (ii) non-autistic, (iii) mixed autistic and non-autistic. Participant 1 in each chain watched a video of an experimenter creating a dog shape from a puzzle toy that could be manipulated. Participant 1 showed Participant 2 how to make a dog shape, Participant 2 showed Participant 3, and so on until the end of the chain. Objective Performance was scored as the number of puzzle pieces in the correct location; self-assessment was measured on a 100-point scale, and the similarity of this self-assessment was calculated by comparing it to Objective Performance. Analyses indicated no difference in the amount of information transmitted between autistic, non-autistic, or mixed chains, or in self-assessment ratings and the similarity of these. Both autistic and non-autistic participants shared information with others and evaluated their performance similarly, aligning with previous work on the transmission of verbal information. However, the predicted breakdown in information sharing in the mixed chains did not occur. It is possible that a mismatch in neurotype may not impact information transmission that is less-verbal and more visuospatial. The heterogeneity of the sample may also have overshadowed any effect of neurotype.
先前的研究表明，自闭症患者传递言语信息的效率与非自闭症患者相同；然而，当自闭症患者和非自闭症患者互动时，传递的信息较少。我们测试了这些发现是否适用于一项主要需要传递视觉信息的任务，并研究了参与者对自己表现的自我评估有多准确。310名成年人（154名自闭症患者）被分配到三种六人传播链条件之一：（i）自闭症患者组，（ii）非自闭症患者组，（iii）自闭症患者和非自闭症患者混合组。每个链条中的参与者1观看了一段实验者用一个可操纵的拼图玩具拼出狗形状的视频。参与者1向参与者2展示如何拼出狗形状，参与者2再向参与者3展示，依此类推，直到链条结束。客观表现根据拼图碎片在正确位置的数量进行评分；自我评估采用100分制，并通过将其与客观表现进行比较来计算这种自我评估的相似度。分析表明，自闭症患者组、非自闭症患者组或混合组之间传递的信息量没有差异，自我评估评分及其相似度也没有差异。自闭症患者和非自闭症患者参与者都与他人分享信息，并对自己的表现进行了类似的评估，这与先前关于言语信息传递的研究结果一致。然而，混合组中预测的信息共享中断并未发生。神经类型的不匹配可能不会影响较少言语化和更多视觉空间化的信息传递。样本的异质性也可能掩盖了神经类型的任何影响。
