On average, autistic adults score lower than NA controls on standalone assessments on each subdomain ( Morrison et al., 2019b). Social cognition refers to the perception and interpretation of social information ( Brothers, 1990) and is often conceptualized as encompassing social perception (i.e., the prioritization and detection of social information), emotion recognition (i.e., accurately identifying the emotional state of others), and theory of mind (i.e., inferring the thoughts and intentions of other people Baron-Cohen, 1991 Happé, 1994 Mathersul et al., 2013). Each has been characterized as a core autistic deficit and are assumed to underlie the occupational challenges ( Taylor et al., 2015), social isolation ( Mazurek, 2014), and reduced quality of life ( Billstedt et al., 2005) often experienced by autistic adults. For autistic adults without intellectual disability, most of these programs are psychosocial in nature and target three primary domains of social ability: social cognition, social skill, and social motivation. Indeed, a deep literature has accumulated cataloging how autistic people differ from non-autistic (NA) people in their neurology, cognition, and behavior ( Pelphrey et al., 2004 Chevallier et al., 2012a Morrison et al., 2017, 2019b), and a wide variety of intervention programs have been developed using this evidence base to try to normalize individual characteristics with the presumption that doing so may reduce or mitigate autistic disability (for a review, see Pallathra et al., 2019). Although the focus on communication and interaction necessitates consideration of interpersonal and relational dynamics, the focus on deficits-or reductions in normative characteristics presumed to underlie autistic disability-has historically centered research and treatment at the level of the individual. They also highlight the need for the development and validation of more ecological assessments of autistic social abilities and the consideration of relational dynamics, not just individual characteristics, when assessing social disability in autism.Īutism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is clinically defined in part by “persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction” ( APA, 2013). Collectively, results suggest that reduced performance by autistic adults on standardized measures of social cognition, social skill, and social motivation do not correspond in clear and predictable ways with their real-world social interaction outcomes. However, links between autistic adults' performance on the three social domains and their social interaction outcomes were minimal and, contrary to prediction, only the social abilities of NA adults predicted some interaction outcomes within mixed diagnostic dyads. Consistent with previous research, autistic adults scored lower than NA adults on the three social domains and were evaluated less favorably by their conversation partners. The current study administered standardized measures of social cognition, social skill, and social motivation to 67 autistic and 58 non-autistic (NA) adults and assessed whether performance on these measures, both individually and relationally between dyadic partners, predicted outcomes for autistic and NA adults interacting with unfamiliar autistic and NA partners in a 5 minute unstructured “get to know you” conversation. Despite this assumption, research has not directly assessed whether or how these three social domains contribute to actual real-world social interaction outcomes for autistic people. Social cognition, social skill, and social motivation have been extensively researched and characterized as atypical in autistic people, with the assumption that each mechanistically contributes to the broader social interaction difficulties that diagnostically define the condition. School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX, United States.

Basic questions autism social skills