Thread by @cjcrompton

It's an exciting milestone for the Diversity in Social Intelligence project today- we have just emailed a summary of our initial findings to our participants!

It's also available on dart.ed.ac.uk/research/nd-iq/

Here's a wee thread of what we've found so far & what we're planning...

*Full disclaimer*: these results are from initial analysis, not yet peer-reviewed or published (i.e. might change after reviewer comments!) & also fully acknowledging the limitations of 240 characters...here goes!

A bit of background: the project explores differences between (1) how autistic people learn and interact with other autistic people (2) how non-autistic people learn and interact with neurotypical people, and (3) how autistic and non-autistic people learn and interact together

We used lots of different methods to try and answer this question from multiple angles: quantitative, experimental tasks, rapport scales, qualitative interviews, participant video observations, researcher video coding...

We did 9 research days, each involving 8 participants. We did three tasks using a 'diffusion chain' - which is like the game Telephone - we showed the first person how to do something, they then showed the second person how to do it, who then showed the third person, & so on...

This meant we had groups of all autistic people sharing the information, groups of all neurotypical people, and groups that alternated between autistic and neurotypical people. More info about the tasks below ⬇️

In the story-telling task, we found that groups of autistic people and groups of non-autistic people do the task similarly well and share similar amounts of information, but when alternating between autistic and non-autistic people, less information is shared and passed on.

We have two main findings here. 1) Autistic people share information with other autistic people as effectively as non-autistic people do. 2) Information sharing can break down when pairs are from different neurotypes - when there is an autistic and a non-autistic person.

(I'll be presenting this at INSAR in Montreal next week if you're there! Social cognition and social behaviour session: Thursday 2nd, 11.30-1.30, poster board number 319. Come and chat to me!)

We also found during the task, autistic people are more comfortable with other autistic people - similarly to how comfortable neurotypical people are with neurotypical people. When autistic and neurotypical people are mixed, the self-rated rapport is significantly lower.

This is finding 3) That feelings of rapport between people of the same neurotype accompany these information-sharing benefits - autistic people have higher rapport with other autistic people, and non-autistic people have higher rapport with non-autistic people.

Our MSc student, Becca Stewart is video coding some of the diffusion chain videos to look at other markers of rapport between the different groups. Results coming in Autumn 2019!

We're exploring the other diffusion chain tasks a bit differently:doing a followup study to find out if when people are with others of the same neurotype they create things that are more similar than when autistic & non-autistic people work together. Here's some info about why ⬇️

We wanted to find out more about what it's like for autistic people spending time with autistic and non-autistic people - both during and afterward - and so some autistic participants did a 1:1 interview to help us explore this. We're still analysing, initial findings below ⬇️

(I'll be talking about this at the @AutisticaUK conference in June if you're there! My talk is called '“I never realised everybody felt as happy as I do when I am around autistic people”: autistic adults’ relationships with autistic and neurotypical friends and family.')

We also wanted to see what (autistic and neurotypical) participants thought about when they watched videos of pairs of autistic people, pairs of neurotypical people, and pairs where one person is autistic/the other is nonautistic, having a short chat about their day to day life.

On the whole, participants (who didnt know the dignosis of the people in the pairs) thought that autistic pairs had high rapport - that they got on well with each other and seemed comfortable - more so than pairs of non-autistic people, or mixed pairs.

This is our fourth finding: External observers can detect the lack of rapport apparent in mixed autistic/non-autistic interactions.

(We're collecting more data on this in collaboration with the brilliant @axbey so we can explore the impact of the diagnosis of the rater)

In summary, we found autistic people's social behaviour includes effective communication & effective social interaction. We have, for the first time, uncovered empirical evidence that there is a form of social intelligence specific to autistic people.

Of course these results may change a lot after reviewer comments - and it's early days, but we're excited about what we've found, and we hope all our participants will enjoy reading our summary. It's available at dart.ed.ac.uk/research/nd-iq/

We'll be holding a special lecture about this project on Wednesday 5th June at 4pm at Kennedy Tower in Edinburgh, which will be free to attend and all welcome!

As ever, this is a huge team effort - massive thank you to the excellent team of @Suereviews @DrEvansWilliams, @autismage and @scrappapertiger, especially for your excellent guidance and feedback on the summary document!

Oh, final thing! Here's a copy of the full summary report we sent out. infogram.com/diversity-in-s…

Oh and another final thing (sorry sorry!) of course the absolute HUGEST of thank you's to all our participants who traveled far and wide to take part to be a part of this research. I am so appreciative of your time and your energy - thank you.