Diagnostic status influences rapport and communicative behaviours in dyadic interactions between autistic and non-autistic people

Abstract

A growing body of research suggests that the behaviours and experiences of autistic and non-autistic people are influenced by whether they are interacting with someone of the same or different diagnostic status. However, little is known about the relationship between these behaviours and the experiences of rapport in matched and mixed neurotype dyads. Using the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model, our pre-registered analyses examine how participants' and their partners' diagnostic statuses influence linguistic, behavioural, and kinematic indices, and how these relate to feelings of rapport among autistic and (n = 57; 17 self-diagnosed) non-autistic (n = 51) participants interacting within autistic (n = 20), non-autistic (n = 17), and mixed autistic-non-autistic (n = 17) dyads. We found that autistic participants reported lower rapport regardless of their partner's diagnostic status, though awareness of their partner's diagnostic status had a moderating effect. We observed a linguistic difference, autistic participants produced longer mean utterance lengths, these and other behavioural or kinematic indices did not mediate the relationship between diagnostic status and rapport across neurotypes. The current work highlights the need for a nuanced understanding of communication dynamics in autism.

Fig 1. Study setup for dyadic social interaction.

Note. Example layout of the study setup for the two members of a single dyad engaged in a social interaction. The image illustrates the spatial arrangement and environment used in the study, with participants’ faces blurred out to ensure anonymity.

Fig 2. Visualisation of the total rapport scores for actors across diagnostic statuses.

Note. The half-violin plots show the distribution of total rapport scores, overlaid with boxplots summarising the median and interquartile ranges, and jittered points representing individual data. The grey diamond indicates the mean for each diagnostic group. Non-autistic and autistic diagnostic statuses are shown, highlighting differences in rapport across actor roles.

Fig 3. Dyad neurotype and partner’s diagnostic status affect rapport.

Note. Transparent data points represent individual observations, and solid points and lines represent model-predicted averages with 95% confidence intervals.