ERIC Number: EJ1064797
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2015-Jul
Pages: 8
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1362-3613
EISSN: N/A
Judgments of Social Awkwardness from Brief Exposure to Children with and without High-Functioning Autism
Grossman, Ruth B
Autism: The International Journal of Research and Practice, v19 n5 p580-587 Jul 2015
We form first impressions of many traits based on very short interactions. This study examines whether typical adults judge children with high-functioning autism to be more socially awkward than their typically developing peers based on very brief exposure to still images, audio-visual, video-only, or audio-only information. We used video and audio recordings of children with and without high-functioning autism captured during a story-retelling task. Typically developing adults were presented with 1?s and 3?s clips of these children, as well as still images, and asked to judge whether the person in the clip was socially awkward. Our findings show that participants who are naïve to diagnostic differences between the children in the clips judged children with high-functioning autism to be socially awkward at a significantly higher rate than their typically developing peers. These results remain consistent for exposures as short as 1?s to visual and/or auditory information, as well as for still images. These data suggest that typical adults use subtle nonverbal and non-linguistic cues produced by children with high-functioning autism to form rapid judgments of social awkwardness with the potential for significant repercussions in social interactions.
Descriptors: Autism, Pervasive Developmental Disorders, Children, Interpersonal Competence, Adults, Value Judgment, Visual Stimuli, Auditory Stimuli
SAGE Publications. 2455 Teller Road, Thousand Oaks, CA 91320. Tel: 800-818-7243; Tel: 805-499-9774; Fax: 800-583-2665; e-mail: journals@sagepub.com; Web site: http://sagepub.com
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) (NIH), Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Branch (IDDB); National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Assessments and Surveys: Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule
Grant or Contract Numbers: R21 DC010867-01; HDP30HD004147