Diversity in Social Intelligence Replication

Exploring how autistic and non-autistic people learn from one another.

About The Project    

The term ‘intelligence’ doesn’t just mean scoring well on a specific test or exams. It can also refer to the ability to function successfully in a social capacity. This might include understanding someone else’s intentions or motives, knowing when to speak and when to not speak and appreciating the social context of an interaction, for example, talking to a close friend compared to a stranger.

Most studies on autistic people posit that due to social communication deficits, autistic people are not as socially intelligent as non-autistic people. However, evidence is now suggesting that autistic people communicate as well with each other as non-autistic people communicate with other non-autistic people.

One study that found this was conducted by Catherine Crompton and Sue Fletcher-Watson at the University of Edinburgh between 2018 and 2020. This study found that autistic people and non-autistic people communicate similarly well when they are with other people of the same neurotype, but when the groups were a mixture of autistic and non-autistic people, breakdowns in communication began to occur. You can read more about the original study here.

This current project replicates the 2018 study across three sites in three countries – the University of Nottingham (England), the University of Edinburgh (Scotland), and The University of Texas at Dallas (USA). The study is being repeated in a larger and more diverse sample to see if we find the same results.

The original study had a major impact not only in the field of autism research but within the autistic community itself. It is hoped that the current study will lead to improvements in the lives of autistic people and their non-autistic friends and family.

The Current Study

The current study will run between 2022 and 2024. We have now finished collecting data from approximately 324 participants across Nottingham, Edinburgh and Dallas, and we are starting to analyse the results.

We ran 18 research days at each site and invited six participants to attend on each day. In Nottingham, this was at the University of Nottingham, University Park campus in the School of Psychology. On some Research Days, all participants were autistic; on some, all participants were non-autistic; and on some, three participants were autistic and three were non-autistic. Sometimes we told participants they were in an autistic, non-autistic or mixed group, and sometimes we did not.

Each Research Day involved completing four-five tasks with another individual or in a group. These were designed to help us understand how information is shared between autistic and non-autistic people.

Why Are You Repeating The Same Study Again?

One of the main tenets of science is that experiments need to be replicable. This means that any researcher (whether involved in the original study or not) should be able to repeat a study with a different sample of participants and see the same effect(s). If results can be successfully replicated, researchers can be much more confident in generalising them to the larger population.

We are repeating our study in a much larger sample and across three different sites to see if we find the same results as our original study. By doing so, we can learn more about autistic and non-autistic interaction and whether there are robust effects of social context on how people communicate.

Please note: recruitment for this study has now ended.

Meet The Team

Our team includes researchers in Nottingham, Edinburgh and Dallas. If you would like to know more about each team member, you can click their name below

Principal Investigator (Edinburgh) – Dr Catherine Crompton

Co-Investigator (Edinburgh) – Professor Sue Fletcher-Watson

Co-Investigator (Dallas) – Professor Noah Sasson

Co-Investigator (Nottingham) – Professor Danielle Ropar

Research Assistant (Edinburgh) – Michelle Dodd

Post-doctoral Research Fellow (Nottingham) – Dr Charlotte Wilks

Research Assistant (Dallas) – Sarah Foster 

Information For Previous Participants

If you are interested in finding out about the results of the current study please contact Dr Charlotte Wilks at the University of Nottingham using the following email address: charlotte.wilks1@nottingham.ac.uk.

Outputs

We will update this section as our outputs become available.

Conference presentations

Open Science in Experimental Autism Research: A replication study of information transfer within and between autistic and non-autistic people. (Edinburgh Open Research Conference 2022)

Outputs from the original Diversity in Social Intelligence study

Peer reviewed papers

•            Neurotype-Matching, but Not Being Autistic, Influences Self and Observer Ratings of Interpersonal Rapport

•            Autistic peer-to-peer information transfer is highly effective

•            ‘I never realised everybody felt as happy as I do when I am around autistic people’: A thematic analysis of autistic adults’ relationships with autistic and neurotypical friends and family

•            What Do New Findings About Social Interaction in Autistic Adults Mean for Neurodevelopmental Research?

•            Investigating Markers of Rapport in Autistic and Nonautistic Interactions

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