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Recent findings suggest that stigma and camouflaging contribute to mental health difficulties for autistic individuals, however, this evidence is largely based on UK samples. While studies have shown cross-cultural differences in levels of autism-related stigma, it is unclear whether camouflaging and mental health difficulties vary across cultures. Hence, the current study had two aims: (1) to determine whether significant relationships between autism acceptance, camouflaging, and mental health difficulties replicate in a cross-cultural sample of autistic adults, and (2) to compare these variables across cultures. To fulfil these aims, 306 autistic adults from eight countries (Australia, Belgium, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States) completed a series of online questionnaires. We found that external acceptance and personal acceptance were associated with lower levels of depression but not camouflaging or stress. Higher camouflaging was associated with elevated levels of depression, anxiety, and stress. Significant differences were found across countries in external acceptance, personal acceptance, depression, anxiety, and stress, even after controlling for relevant covariates. Levels of camouflaging also differed across countries however this effect became non-significant after controlling for the covariates. These findings have significant implications, identifying priority regions for anti-stigma interventions, and highlighting countries where greater support for mental health difficulties is needed., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Keating et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

To date, studies have not yet established the mechanisms underpinning differences in autistic and non-autistic emotion recognition. The current study first investigated whether autistic and non-autistic adults differed in terms of the precision and/or differentiation of their visual emotion representations and their general matching abilities, and second, explored whether differences therein were related to challenges in accurately recognizing emotional expressions. To fulfil these aims, 45 autistic and 45 non-autistic individuals completed three tasks employing dynamic point light displays of emotional facial expressions. We identified that autistic individuals had more precise visual emotion representations than their non-autistic counterparts, however, this did not confer any benefit for their emotion recognition. Whilst for non-autistic people, non-verbal reasoning and the interaction between precision of emotion representations and matching ability predicted emotion recognition, no variables contributed to autistic emotion recognition. These findings raise the possibility that autistic individuals are less guided by their emotion representations, thus lending support to Bayesian accounts of autism., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

To date, studies have not established whether autistic and non-autistic individuals differ in emotion recognition from facial motion cues when matched in terms of alexithymia. Here, autistic and non-autistic adults (N = 60) matched on age, gender, non-verbal reasoning ability and alexithymia, completed an emotion recognition task, which employed dynamic point light displays of emotional facial expressions manipulated in terms of speed and spatial exaggeration. Autistic participants exhibited significantly lower accuracy for angry, but not happy or sad, facial motion with unmanipulated speed and spatial exaggeration. Autistic, and not alexithymic, traits were predictive of accuracy for angry facial motion with unmanipulated speed and spatial exaggeration. Alexithymic traits, in contrast, were predictive of the magnitude of both correct and incorrect emotion ratings., (© 2021. The Author(s).)

Recent developments suggest that autistic individuals require dynamic angry expressions to have a higher speed in order for them to be successfully identified. Therefore, it is plausible that autistic individuals do not have a 'deficit' in angry expression recognition, but rather their internal representation of these expressions is characterised by very high-speed movement. In this study, matched groups of autistic and non-autistic adults completed a novel emotion-based task which employed dynamic displays of happy, angry and sad point light facial (PLF) expressions. On each trial, participants moved a slider to manipulate the speed of a PLF stimulus until it moved at a speed that, in their 'mind's eye', was typical of happy, angry or sad expressions. Participants were shown three different types of PLFs-those showing the full-face, only the eye region, and only the mouth region, wherein the latter two were included to test whether differences in facial information sampling underpinned any dissimilarities in speed attributions. Across both groups, participants attributed the highest speeds to angry, then happy, then sad, facial motion. Participants increased the speed of angry and happy expressions by 41% and 27% respectively and decreased the speed of sad expressions by 18%. This suggests that participants have 'caricatured' internal representations of emotion, wherein emotion-related kinematic cues are over-emphasised. There were no differences between autistic and non-autistic individuals in the speeds attributed to full-face and partial-face angry, happy and sad expressions respectively. Consequently, we find no evidence that autistic adults possess atypically fast internal representations of anger., (© 2021 The Authors. Autism Research published by International Society for Autism Research and Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Rewards act as a motivator for positive behavior and learning. Although compounding evidence indicates that reward processing operates differently in autistic individuals who do not have co-occurring learning disabilities, little is known about individuals who have such difficulties or other complex needs. This study aimed first to assess the feasibility of using an adapted reward devaluation paradigm to examine basic reward processes in this underrepresented population, and second to investigate whether autistic children and adolescents with complex needs would show dynamic behavioral changes in response to changes in the motivational value of a reward. Twenty-seven autistic children and adolescents with complex needs and 20 typically developing 5-year-old children took part in the study. Participants were presented with two visual cues on a touchscreen laptop, which triggered the delivery of a video, music, or physical reward. One of the rewards was then presented in abundance to decrease its motivational value. Participants showed decreased interest in the video and music rewards after devaluation. The experimental setup was found to be suitable to test individuals with complex needs, although recommendations are made for the use of physical rewards. The results suggest that autistic participants with complex needs demonstrate goal-directed behavior and that it is feasible to develop experimental paradigms that can shed important light on learning processes that are fundamental to many education and intervention strategies for this population. Autism Res 2020, 13: 1915-1928. © 2020 The Authors. Autism Research published by International Society for Autism Research and Wiley Periodicals LLC. LAY SUMMARY: We adapted an experimental task to conduct research with autistic children and adolescents with complex needs, who remain grossly underrepresented in autism research. We found that once a reward was presented in great quantity, participants were less motivated to obtain it, showing that they adapted their behavior to changes in the value of that reward. This is an important finding to help promote learning and design better interventions for this population., (© 2020 The Authors. Autism Research published by International Society for Autism Research and Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

The way in which we move influences our ability to perceive, interpret and predict the actions of others. Thus movements play an important role in social cognition. This review article will appraise the literature concerning movement kinematics and motor control in individuals with autism, and will argue that movement differences between typical and autistic individuals may contribute to bilateral difficulties in reciprocal social cognition., (© 2016 The Author(s).)

We used a changing criterion design to evaluate the extent to which differential negative reinforcement of other behavior increased compliance with wearing a medical alert bracelet for a young boy with autism. Results showed the duration for which the participant wore the bracelet systematically increased across trials from 5 s to 7 hr over several weeks., (© Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior.)

Individuals with autism spectrum conditions have difficulties in understanding and responding appropriately to others. Additionally, they demonstrate impaired perception of biological motion and problems with motor control. Here we investigated whether individuals with autism move with an atypical kinematic profile, which might help to explain perceptual and motor impairments, and in principle may contribute to some of their higher level social problems. We recorded trajectory, velocity, acceleration and jerk while adult participants with autism and a matched control group conducted horizontal sinusoidal arm movements. Additionally, participants with autism took part in a biological motion perception task in which they classified observed movements as 'natural' or 'unnatural'. Results show that individuals with autism moved with atypical kinematics; they did not minimize jerk to the same extent as the matched typical control group, and moved with greater acceleration and velocity. The degree to which kinematics were atypical was correlated with a bias towards perceiving biological motion as 'unnatural' and with the severity of autism symptoms as measured by the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule. We suggest that fundamental differences in movement kinematics in autism might help to explain their problems with motor control. Additionally, developmental experience of their own atypical kinematic profiles may lead to disrupted perception of others' actions.

Background: Perception of biological motion is linked to the action perception system in the human brain, abnormalities within which have been suggested to underlie impairments in social domains observed in autism spectrum conditions (ASC). However, the literature on biological motion perception in ASC is heterogeneous and it is unclear whether deficits are specific to biological motion, or might generalize to form-from-motion perception., Methodology and Principal Findings: We compared psychophysical thresholds for both biological and non-biological form-from-motion perception in adults with ASC and controls. Participants viewed point-light displays depicting a walking person (Biological Motion), a translating rectangle (Structured Object) or a translating unfamiliar shape (Unstructured Object). The figures were embedded in noise dots that moved similarly and the task was to determine direction of movement. The number of noise dots varied on each trial and perceptual thresholds were estimated adaptively. We found no evidence for an impairment in biological or non-biological object motion perception in individuals with ASC. Perceptual thresholds in the three conditions were almost identical between the ASC and control groups., Discussion and Conclusions: Impairments in biological motion and non-biological form-from-motion perception are not across the board in ASC, and are only found for some stimuli and tasks. We discuss our results in relation to other findings in the literature, the heterogeneity of which likely relates to the different tasks performed. It appears that individuals with ASC are unaffected in perceptual processing of form-from-motion, but may exhibit impairments in higher order judgments such as emotion processing. It is important to identify more specifically which processes of motion perception are impacted in ASC before a link can be made between perceptual deficits and the higher-level features of the disorder.

We compared psychophysical thresholds for biological and non-biological motion detection in adults with autism spectrum conditions (ASCs) and controls. Participants watched animations of a biological stimulus (a moving hand) or a non-biological stimulus (a falling tennis ball). The velocity profile of the movement was varied between 100% natural motion (minimum-jerk (MJ) for the hand; gravitational (G) for the ball) and 100% constant velocity (CV). Participants were asked to judge which animation was 'less natural' in a two-interval forced-choice paradigm and thresholds were estimated adaptively. There was a significant interaction between group and condition. Thresholds in the MJ condition were lower than in the G condition for the NC group whereas there was no difference between the thresholds in the two conditions for the ASC group. Thus, unlike the controls, the ASC group did not show an increased sensitivity for perturbation to biological over non-biological velocity profiles.