Autism Research—What’s New in January 2023?
In these monthly research roundups by Ann Memmott PgC MA, we take a look at some of the latest autism research being reported through Journals.
Content Warning: the last article discussed contain content that some may find upsetting or triggering.
Self-reported Everyday Sources of Happiness and Unhappiness in Autistic Adults
Parenteau and team asked 203 autistic adults aged 18-35 to write about what makes them happy or unhappy. This kind of research is surprisingly rare, but very important. Their findings – that many autistic people reported happiness from their relationships with their loved family members, partners or friends. A supportive work environment was another top source of happiness, along with pets, achieving a personal goal that was meaningful to them, and going to an enjoyable event of their choice. If any of those things go wrong, those become a major source of unhappiness.
The myths around autism have suggested that autistic people are antisocial and would prefer to be alone with a hobby, so this research challenges this and asks us to think again about our views of autistic people. It is so important to ask people about what is important to them, rather than rely on decades-old inaccurate beliefs.
Short report: Prevalence of autism spectrum disorder in a large pediatric primary care network
Wallis and team looked at the records for some 23,000 young children in the USA. Autistic children were about 3% of that total, so approaching 1 in 30 children in the country. This is a very different figure to the “1 in 100” that so many were told. The figures still show a lower number of autistic girls being diagnosed. We know from other research that the girls tend to be diagnosed later in life, for multiple reasons, including the influence of past assumptions that autism is about young boys with noticeable ‘behaviour’.
Psychological strengths and well-being: Strengths use predicts quality of life, well-being and mental health in autism
Taylor and team asked 276 people to take part in research looking at autistic and nonautistic people’s strengths. People were asked to rate their strengths, and think about their quality of life, for example. As the authors say, this type of research is fairly rare. Most autism research has focused on alleged negatives about autistic people, and very little has asked autistic people about quality of life so far. The team worked in partnership with autistic individuals to ensure that the research was respectful and represented good aims. This is good to see, and a vital factor in producing research that’s fit for purpose. The image to the right shows the findings.
The research team spent some time thinking about what the information was telling us. Autistic people are told from the earliest of ages, for example, that we ‘lack empathy’ and ‘have bad social skills’. Recent research from Crompton and team at the DART centre shows that autistic social skills work very well with autistic people, but few have the opportunity to realise this. This summary may be helpful as a starting point for that. Autistic people may therefore believe that they are lacking in those skill sets, whereas in reality their skills are simply different. It will be good to see follow-on research which looks at these factors in more depth.
The team found that use of personal strengths by autistic people was strongly associated with positive outcomes, including better quality of life, their feeling of well-being, and their mental health. Using this kind of strengths-based approach to life is therefore proving to be a very good thing, rather than focusing on improving things that autistic people find most difficult.
Table showing strengths: The first number in each column is the one to look at, with higher numbers equalling a higher personal rating for that strength. (The second number is a measure of how variable the answers were, and isn’t very relevant unless you’re a statistician).
A mind-reading puzzle: Autistic people are more efficient at a theory-of-mind task
Autistic people are believed to be bad at guessing what someone else might be thinking or planning to do. Are we? This team set up some tests for this.
“…autistic participants…showed better performance in the social task relative to non-autistics and maintained similar performance across framings. We propose that autistic participants might have translated the social instructions into a general rule that proved more efficient in this situation.”
So, another new study which is showing that the received wisdom about autistic people being a set of deficits needs some hard challenging.
Content Warning: abuse and interpersonal violence
'Maybe we just seem like easy targets': A qualitative analysis of autistic adults' experiences of interpersonal violence
Gibbs & Pellicano bring their considerable expertise to the difficult topic of violence towards autistic people. Content warning, therefore.
They interviewed 22 autistic adults whose ages ranged from 19 to 57. Although some media outlets sell newspapers by promoting the idea that autistic people are generally violent, research shows that the problem is very much reversed; many autistic people are subjected to violent assaults of a physical or sexual nature on a very regular basis. So regular that many assume this is just how life is supposed to be. The table from the research paper, shown below, summarises the findings from the interviews. This is important research, showing very clearly the impact of autistic people frequently being told they are broken, deficient and in every way faulty. Many reported being invalidated, disbelieved, and told that their feelings and instincts were wrong. Others, that they felt pressured to conform and fit in to the expectation of what to do and who to be with, which placed them in dangerous situations.
Whilst a harrowing read, teams supporting autistic lives would benefit from reflecting on the findings. Autistic people deserve safer lives where they are respected, valued and believed.
