How autistic are you? Autistic-like traits, language ability, and how a nasal voice shapes people’s social judgements

Abstract

Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is thought to be the far end of a spectrum of behaviours that include individuals from the neurotypical population. Characteristics associated with ASD are autistic-like traits such as decreased social skill and acute attention to detail. Language difficulties, hypernasality, and a high degree of autistic-like traits are characteristic of ASD. People with ASD are also more likely to be assigned negative social judgements (Smerbeck, 2010). The following studies will determine whether language difficulties, hypernasality, and negative social judgements are characteristics present in the neurotypical population, and if these characteristics are related to the degree of autistic-like traits. In Study I, neurotypical adult males completed the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (ASQ, Baron-Cohen et al., 2001) to measure autistic-like traits. Receptive and productive language abilities were measured as well. Findings from this first study showed that language ability was not consistently related to autistic-like traits. The purpose of Study II was to determine whether nasality and negative social judgements are related to autistic-like traits. A group of assessors rated the 4 most nasal and 4 least nasal participants from Study I, and the participant with the highest and the lowest ASQ scores on positive and negative social attributes, on male- and female-oriented descriptive attributes, as well as on how young and typically-developing the participants are. Nasality and negative social judgements were not related to autistic-like traits. In this second study, nasal participants were more likely to be rated with negative social judgements. Nasal participants were also more likely to be rated with positive social judgements. The findings provide support for future exploration of nasality in explaining negative social judgements in people with ASD, with more research needed to determine why the positive social judgements associated with nasality are not observed in ASD.