Daniel J. Faso

Neurotypical Peers are Less Willing to Interact with Those with Autism based on Thin Slice Judgments

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), including those who otherwise require less support, face severe difficulties in everyday social interactions. Research in this area has primarily focused on identifying the cognitive and neurological differences that contribute to these social impairments, but social interaction by definition involves more than one person and social difficulties may arise not just from people with ASD themselves, but also from the perceptions, judgments, and social decisions made by those around them. Here, across three studies, we find that first impressions of individuals with ASD made from thin slices of real-world social behavior by typically-developing observers are not only far less favorable across a range of trait judgments compared to controls, but also are associated with reduced intentions to pursue social interaction. These patterns are remarkably robust, occur within seconds, do not change with increased exposure, and persist across both child and adult age groups. However, these biases disappear when impressions are based on conversational content lacking audio-visual cues, suggesting that style, not substance, drives negative impressions of ASD. Collectively, these findings advocate for a broader perspective of social difficulties in ASD that considers both the individual’s impairments and the biases of potential social partners.

When Father Doesn't Know Best: Selective Disagreement Between Self-Report and Informant Report of the Broad Autism Phenotype in Parents of a Child with Autism

The Broad Autism Phenotype Questionnaire (BAPQ) is a reliable tool for identifying three autism‐related traits—social aloofness, pragmatic language abnormalities and rigid personality—within families of a person with autism and the general population. Although little is known concerning agreement between self‐report and informant report versions of the BAPQ, identifying individual characteristics affecting agreement between the two can highlight important considerations for maximizing its yield, particularly when only one version is administered. Here, analysis of self‐report and informant report of the BAPQ completed by 444 parents of a child with autism revealed moderate to strong agreement between the two versions for all three broad autism phenotype (BAP) traits when the self‐reporting parent did not possess the trait being assessed. In contrast, disagreement selectively occurred when the assessed parent was positive for the BAP trait being rated. This pattern was driven primarily by fathers who were positive for a BAP trait endorsing lower levels of that trait relative to informant report. This discrepancy did not occur for mothers, nor did it occur for fathers lacking BAP traits. Because this pattern was specific to fathers positive for BAP traits, it likely reflects selective “blind spots” in their self‐reporting and not poorer self‐reporting by fathers more broadly, nor a general tendency of overreporting by informant mothers. The presence of BAP traits in informing parents, however, largely did not reduce agreement between self‐report and informant report. In sum, self‐report may underestimate the presence of BAP traits in fathers but is generally consistent with informant report for mothers. Autism Res 2014, 7: 731–739.

The broad autism phenotype predicts relationship outcomes in newly formed college roommates

Although previous studies have reported that the broad autism phenotype is associated with reduced relationship quality within established relationships, understanding how this association emerges requires assessment prior to relationship development. In the present longitudinal study, college roommates with minimal familiarity prior to cohabitation (N = 162) completed the broad autism phenotype questionnaire and intermittently reported on their relationship quality and interpersonal behaviors toward their roommate over their first 10 weeks of living together. Actor–Partner Interdependence Models demonstrated that roommates mismatched on aloofness (one high and one low) had lower relationship satisfaction than those matched on it, with the interpersonal behavior of warmth mediating this association. Because relationship satisfaction remained high when both roommates were aloof, satisfaction does not appear predicated upon the presence of aloofness generally but rather reflects a product of dissimilarity in aloof profiles between roommates. In contrast, although participants reported less relationship satisfaction and commitment with roommates higher on pragmatic language abnormalities, mismatches on this broad autism phenotype trait, and on rigid personality, were less consequential. In sum, these findings suggest that complementary profiles of social motivation may facilitate relationship quality during the early course of relationship development.

Production and perception of emotional prosody by adults with autism spectrum disorder

This study examined production and perception of affective prosody by adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Previous research has reported increased pitch variability in talkers with ASD compared to typically developing (TD) controls in grammatical speaking tasks (e.g., comparing interrogative vs. declarative sentences), but it is unclear whether this pattern extends to emotional speech. In this study, speech recordings in five emotion contexts (angry, happy, interested, sad, and neutral) were obtained from 15 adult males with ASD and 15 controls (Experiment 1), and were later presented to 52 listeners (22 with ASD) who were asked to identify the emotion expressed and rate the level of naturalness of the emotion in each recording (Experiment 2). Compared to the TD group, talkers with ASD produced phrases with greater intensity, longer durations, and increased pitch range for all emotions except neutral, suggesting that their greater pitch variability was specific to emotional contexts. When asked to identify emotion from speech, both groups of listeners were more accurate at identifying the emotion context from speech produced by ASD speakers compared to TD speakers, but rated ASD emotional speech as sounding less natural. Collectively, these results reveal differences in emotional speech production in talkers with ASD that provide an acoustic basis for reported perceptions of oddness in the speech presentation of adults with ASD. Autism Res 2017, 10: 1991–2001.

Affective prosody production in autistic and typically developed adult males

This study examined differences in production of affective prosody in adult males with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developed (TD) controls. Previous studies of children with ASD have reported increased variability in fundamental frequency (f0) in spontaneous and semi-spontaneous speech compared to TD children. A controlled set of expressive speech recordings was collected from 30 talkers (15 ASD) to measure differences between the two groups using the same lexical content. Isolated vowels, vowel-consonant-vowel (VCV) syllables, words and short phrases were elicited in five emotion contexts: angry, happy, interested, sad, and neutral. The recordings were obtained using evoked and portrayed elicitation techniques: talkers were asked to recall past emotional episodes (evoked) and role-play scripted scenarios (portrayed) specific to each emotion context. Consistent with previous work and extending the findings to adults producing the same lexical content, talkers with ASD showed increased f0 ...