Autistic Adults May Be Erroneously Perceived as Deceptive and Lacking Credibility

Lim, Alliyza; Young, Robyn L.; Brewer, Neil

doi:10.1007/s10803-021-04963-4

Cited by 33 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 88 publications

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“…Whilst it is plausible that cognitive factors (such as metacognition) may be related to these real-world outcomes, it is also vital to consider other plausibly related factors. For example, autistic people often report experiencing stigma (Perry et al, 2020), and a recent study found that autistic people were more likely to be perceived as deceptive or dishonest compared to neurotypical participants (Lim et al, 2021). Moreover, autistic people face barriers to accessing physical healthcare (Mason et al, 2019), and face unmet needs in a range of areas (including employment support; Lai & Weiss, 2017), or employment (i.e., stigma, not understanding ASC, or communication difficulties; Black et al, 2020).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decision-making in autism: A narrative review

Plas

Mason

Happé

2023

Autism

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Autistic people often have an atypical profile of abilities: while excelling in some structured paradigms, many report difficulties with making real-life decisions. To test whether decision-making in autism is different from in typically developing controls, we reviewed 104 studies that compared decision-making performance between autistic and comparison participants ( N = 2712 autistic and N = 3189 comparison participants) between 1998 and 2022. Our searches revealed four main decision-making paradigms that are widely used in the field of decision neuroscience: perceptual discrimination, reward learning, metacognition and value-based decision-making paradigm. Our synthesis highlights that perceptual processing and reward learning were similar between autistic and comparison participants, whereas value-based decision-making and metacognitive accuracy were often different between groups. Furthermore, decision-making differences were most pronounced when the autistic participant was explicitly probed to report on an internal belief, while implicit markers of the same decision (e.g. error-related response times) were usually not different. Our findings provide evidence in favour of a metacognitive explanation of decision-making atypicalities in autism. Lay summary Many autistic people report difficulties with real-life decision-making. However, when doing decision-making tests in laboratory experiments, autistic people often perform as well or better than non-autistic people. We review previously published studies on autistic people’s decision-making, across different types of tests, to understand what type of decision-making is more challenging. To do this, we searched four databases of research papers. We found 104 studies that tested, in total, 2712 autistic and 3189 comparison participants on different decision-making tasks. We found that there were four categories of decision-making tests that were used in these experiments: perceptual (e.g. deciding which image has the most dots); reward learning (e.g. learning which deck of cards gives the best reward); metacognition (e.g. knowing how well you perform or what you want); and value-based (e.g. making a decision based on a choice between two outcomes that differ in value to you). Overall, these studies suggest that autistic and comparison participants tend to perform similarly well at perceptual and reward-learning decisions. However, autistic participants tended to decide differently from comparison participants on metacognition and value-based paradigms. This suggests that autistic people might differ from typically developing controls in how they evaluate their own performance and in how they make decisions based on weighing up the subjective value of two different options. We suggest these reflect more general differences in metacognition, thinking about thinking, in autism.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decision-making in autism: A narrative review

Plas

Mason

Happé

2023

Autism

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“…Considering autistic peoples’ experiences of (and susceptibility to) bullying and exploitation (Cappadocia et al, 2012; Chandler et al, 2019), deception may also be an important self-protective tool. Concerningly, autistic people are disproportionately perceived as deceptive even when truthful (Lim et al, 2021). Therefore, deception research in the context of the criminal justice system has the potential to illuminate further areas of vulnerability.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deceptive behaviour in autism: A scoping review

Bagnall

Russell

Brosnan

et al. 2021

Autism

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The ability to deceive is a key milestone in social cognitive development for typically developing individuals. In this scoping review, we systematically searched the literature to summarise research on deceptive behaviour in autism and identify gaps in knowledge. Across the 28 studies identified, three main themes were synthesised, with seven subthemes: (1) Deception ability and prevalence (1a) gameplay deception; (1b) naturalistic deception; (2) Psychological correlates of deception (2a) verbal, intellectual and social ability; (2b) theory of mind (ToM) behaviours; (2c) executive function; and (3) Social learning (3a) training; (3b) social contexts. The findings challenge common stereotypes, showing that autistic individuals can and do engage in deception. However, many do so less frequently and less adeptly than typically developing individuals. Emerging evidence also suggests that autistic individuals (without co-occurring intellectual disability) may use compensatory strategies when engaging in deception, and that more skilled deceptive behaviour may arise later in life. Implications and directions for future research are discussed. Lay abstract The ability to deceive others is an important skill that usually develops in early childhood. In this review, we give an overview of studies that have examined deceptive behaviour in autistic children, adolescents and adults. We separated the study findings into three main categories and seven sub-categories: (1) Deception ability and prevalence (1a) gameplay deception; (1b) naturalistic deception; (2) Psychological processes in deception (2a) verbal, intellectual and social ability; (2b) ability to understand others’ thoughts and beliefs; (2c) cognitive ability; and (3) Social learning (3a) training; (3b) social contexts. Contrary to some stereotypes, we found that autistic people can and do deceive but often find this more difficult than non-autistic people. We also found that autistic people may use different psychological processes than non-autistic people when deceiving and may get better at deception in adulthood.

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“…Nevertheless, I argue that demeanors lead to systematic and predictable errors in human veracity judgments because there are a substantial number of individual communicators whose demeanors are “mismatched” with their internal states (Levine et al, 2011 ). For example, an honest person on the autism spectrum might come off as deceptive because of their demeanor (Lim et al, 2021 ).…”

Section: Definitions and Distinctionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Content, context, cues, and demeanor in deception detection

Levine

2022

Front. Psychol.

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Autistic Adults May Be Erroneously Perceived as Deceptive and Lacking Credibility

Cited by 33 publications

References 88 publications

Decision-making in autism: A narrative review

Decision-making in autism: A narrative review

Deceptive behaviour in autism: A scoping review

Content, context, cues, and demeanor in deception detection

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