The role of interpersonal synchrony in forming impressions of autistic and non-autistic adults.

When people meet, they almost instantaneously form an impression of each other. First impressions of character traits and rapport are less favourable when people with autism spectrum condition (ASC) are judged compared to non-autistic people. Little is known about the behavioural differences that drive these altered impressions. In the present study, we investigated the influence of interpersonal synchrony on impression formation of autistic and non-autistic people. Specifically, we used lagged cross-correlations to assess how much each interactant's motion energy, a measure which can be determined from video recordings, influenced the other interactant's motion energy. In short, silent clips of dyadic conversations, we asked non-autistic participants to rate their impression of one of the two interactants, which was solely based on the outlines of both interactants. We expected that the amount of leading of the target interactant, their diagnostic status as well as the interaction of these factors would influence impression formation. We found that while the amount of leading had a positive effect on the impressions of non-autistic interactants, this was not true for interactants with ASC. This suggests that interpersonal synchrony of motion energy is one driver of less favourable impressions of autistic compared to non-autistic people.

Event-related potentials to emotional and neutral stimuli.

The present study examined subjects' cognitive processing of pictures of emotional and neutral facial expressions, as measured by Event-Related Potentials (ERPs). In Experiment 1, 10 subjects viewed two slides of a woman modelling angry and happy expressions; in Experiment 2, 10 subjects viewed slides of two women modelling neutral expressions. One face appeared on 20% of the trials and the other on 80% of the trials. Subjects counted the low frequency target face. In both experiments, the area of the P300 component was larger at Pz than Cz. In Experiment 1, P300 area was larger when the target was happy; peak amplitude was greater when the target was angry. No differences between neutral target faces were found for P300 amplitude or area in Experiment 2. These results suggest that emotional versus neutral facial expressions elicit different electrophysiological responses; responses are further differentiated to positive versus negative expressions.