Newsletter: Summer/Autumn 2024
Welcome to the eleventh edition of the autism@icn newsletter! Thank you to everyone who took part in this summer's 2024 coordinated research days. More information about next summer's research participation opportunities will be included in the Winter/Spring 2025 newsletter.
To hear more about the latest news from autism@icn, follow us on Twitter.
What do you think?
If you have any comments on the newsletter, for example, what is good about it or what can be improved, please email your feedback to [email protected].
The autism@icn newsletter aims to highlight events related to autism that are taking place (or have taken place). If you have anything you want to include in the next newsletter, please email [email protected].
Research Days 2024
Thanks to the over 80 of you who took part in the coordinated research days this summer! With your participation, we were able to research how autistic and non-autistic people understand the world differently, including how people process and react to specific sounds, words, and social situations. More details on next summer's research days will be listed in our upcoming newsletter: Winter/Spring 2025, so stay tuned!
Latest findings
Understanding Spontaneous Belief in Autism
To hear more about the latest news from autism@icn, follow us on Twitter.
What do you think?
If you have any comments on the newsletter, for example, what is good about it or what can be improved, please email your feedback to [email protected].
The autism@icn newsletter aims to highlight events related to autism that are taking place (or have taken place). If you have anything you want to include in the next newsletter, please email [email protected].
Research Days 2024
Thanks to the over 80 of you who took part in the coordinated research days this summer! With your participation, we were able to research how autistic and non-autistic people understand the world differently, including how people process and react to specific sounds, words, and social situations. More details on next summer's research days will be listed in our upcoming newsletter: Winter/Spring 2025, so stay tuned!
Latest findings
Understanding Spontaneous Belief in Autism
If you have participated over the last few years in one of our research days, you may have taken part in this study!
For years, researchers have been investigating how autistic people understand others' thoughts and feelings. This ability, called mentalizing, involves predicting what someone else might believe or feel. Spontaneous mentalizing refers to mentalizing that occurs automatically, outside of a person’s awareness, and can be measured by tracking where a person looks while watching different social scenarios. In a recent study, Ruihan Wu and colleagues aimed to explore whether autistic adults struggle with spontaneous mentalizing using an eye-tracking task that measured how autistic and non-autistic participants looked at different situations.
Participants were shown videos involving true beliefs (where the protagonist in the video knew the correct information) and false beliefs (where the protagonist’s beliefs were incorrect). Both groups did well when asked direct questions about these beliefs, showing they could reason about the protagonist’s thoughts. However, when it came to spontaneous reactions, the eye-tracking results revealed that autistic adults didn’t show the same looking pattern as non-autistic adults. The autistic adults didn’t (with their eye movements) anticipate where the protagonist would look based on her false belief, indicating it is likely that they didn’t automatically connect the protagonist’s belief with her actions.
For years, researchers have been investigating how autistic people understand others' thoughts and feelings. This ability, called mentalizing, involves predicting what someone else might believe or feel. Spontaneous mentalizing refers to mentalizing that occurs automatically, outside of a person’s awareness, and can be measured by tracking where a person looks while watching different social scenarios. In a recent study, Ruihan Wu and colleagues aimed to explore whether autistic adults struggle with spontaneous mentalizing using an eye-tracking task that measured how autistic and non-autistic participants looked at different situations.
Participants were shown videos involving true beliefs (where the protagonist in the video knew the correct information) and false beliefs (where the protagonist’s beliefs were incorrect). Both groups did well when asked direct questions about these beliefs, showing they could reason about the protagonist’s thoughts. However, when it came to spontaneous reactions, the eye-tracking results revealed that autistic adults didn’t show the same looking pattern as non-autistic adults. The autistic adults didn’t (with their eye movements) anticipate where the protagonist would look based on her false belief, indicating it is likely that they didn’t automatically connect the protagonist’s belief with her actions.
An example of our eye-tracker, circled below in red
Both groups paid similar attention to social cues (like the protagonist’s actions) before making predictions (see graph below), suggesting that autistic adults process social information in the same way as non-autistic adults. However, autistic people might find it difficult to apply this social knowledge in real-time interactions, making it challenging for them to predict how others are thinking or feeling in the moment. This prompts us to consider how non-autistic people can adjust social interactions to better accommodate autistic people.
Graph depicting similar gaze patterns between autistic and non-autistic people before predictions
New methods, such as eye-tracking, can deepen our understanding of how neurodivergent people experience social situations differently - and similarly - to neurotypical people. This has led us to focus our upcoming research on whether autistic people display spontaneous mentalizing when interacting with other autistic people, linked to the double empathy problem. (Click here to read more about the double empathy problem).
Click here to read Ruihan’s original paper.
Click here to read Ruihan’s original paper.
The paper is: Wu, R., Lim, J. T., Ahmed, Z., Berger, R., Acem, E., Chowdhury, I., White, S. J. (2024). Do autistic adults spontaneously reason about belief? A detailed exploration of alternative explanations. Royal Society Open Science, 11(7), 231889. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.231889
Spotlight on...
The autism@icn team is a diverse group of researchers interested in understanding autism. In each newsletter we highlight the role of one of our team members. In this issue, it’s Ryan Oakeson.
Ryan (left) is a PhD student supervised by Professor Sophie Scott, who leads the ICN’s Speech Communication lab and is also the ICN Director. Ryan studies the brain processes that underlie listening effort in autistic and non-autistic people. Listening effort refers to the cognitive resources required to understand an auditory message and is often experienced when people try to decipher speech-in-noise, also known as the cocktail party effect.
Ryan uses MEG (a non-invasive brain imaging technique) in combination with pupillometry (a technique to measure changes in pupil size) to measure brain and physiological responses to speech masked by various noises. He also explores various cognitive functions and personality traits that may play a role in a person’s effortful listening experiences. If you participated in this summer’s 2024 coordinated research days, you may have met Ryan and taken part in his PhD project!
Fun fact: As a part of his programme, Ryan will complete the rest of his PhD at the National Institute of Mental Health in the United States. He can also make the perfect water drop sound effect with his mouth!
Events
Ruihan Wu passes her PhD viva
Congratulations to Ruihan Wu (right) for passing her PhD viva! Ruihan was a PhD student in the Developmental Diversity Lab supervised by Dr Sarah White. Her project at the ICN used eye-tracking, brain imaging, and behavioural assessments to investigate how mentalizing is influenced by contextual factors, such as intergroup bias and evaluative contexts, in neurodivergent people. She currently works as a postdoctoral researcher in the ToddlerLab at CBCD Birkbeck, University of London
Ruihan Wu passes her PhD viva
Congratulations to Ruihan Wu (right) for passing her PhD viva! Ruihan was a PhD student in the Developmental Diversity Lab supervised by Dr Sarah White. Her project at the ICN used eye-tracking, brain imaging, and behavioural assessments to investigate how mentalizing is influenced by contextual factors, such as intergroup bias and evaluative contexts, in neurodivergent people. She currently works as a postdoctoral researcher in the ToddlerLab at CBCD Birkbeck, University of London
Sarah White renews her Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship
Congratulations to Dr Sarah White (left), group leader of the Development Diversity Lab, who recently received a grant from the Royal Society to renew her Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship.
Congratulations to Dr Sarah White (left), group leader of the Development Diversity Lab, who recently received a grant from the Royal Society to renew her Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship.
Addition to the lab: Stella Evangelou
Stella Evangelou (right) has joined the Developmental Diversity Lab, led by Dr Sarah White, as a voluntary research assistant. She is an undergraduate from University of Surrey and is currently doing her professional training year at the lab! Welcome Stella!
Stella Evangelou (right) has joined the Developmental Diversity Lab, led by Dr Sarah White, as a voluntary research assistant. She is an undergraduate from University of Surrey and is currently doing her professional training year at the lab! Welcome Stella!
Publication highlight
You may have taken part in this study a few years ago!
Different types of laughter play an important role in how we communicate and connect with others. Spontaneous laughter is an involuntary response to tickling or humour, whilst conversational laughter is controlled and voluntary. Researchers have found that many people can distinguish between these two types of laughter and can understand the social intention and meaning behind conversational laughter.
Members of the ICN’s Developmental Diversity Lab, including Ceci Qing Cai and Sarah White, were the first to use a brain imaging technique called fMRI (pictured on the left) to explore how autistic and non-autistic adults implicitly process these different types of laughter after hearing ‘funny words’. You may have taken part in one of Ceci’s studies during previous years’ Research Days!
Each participant listened to a total of 200 words paired with either spontaneous or conversational laughter and rated how funny they thought each word was. Both groups found words paired with spontaneous laughter funnier than words paired with conversational laughter. However, measurements of participant’s brain activity revealed that non-autistic adults displayed greater activity in brain areas involving mentalizing (the ability to understand the thoughts and feelings of others) when listening to words followed by conversational laughter compared to spontaneous laughter. However, autistic adults did not show this difference in brain activity when listening to these two types of laughter.
These results suggest that autistic people might find it more difficult than non-autistic people to always understand the intentions behind conversational laughter. This emphasises the importance of using clear communication when autistic and non-autistic people interact to make social interactions easier to navigate. Building on this study, we are currently interested in exploring which types of laughter are best suited to autistic people.
Click here to read the original paper.
The paper is:
Cai, C. Q., Lavan, N., Chen, S., Wang, C., Ozturk, O. C., Chiu R., Gilbert, S. J., White, S. J., Scott, S. K. (2024). Mapping the differential impact of spontaneous and conversational laughter on brain and mind: an fMRI study in autism. Cerebral Cortex, 34(5). https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhae199
For a complete list of publications from the autism@icn group, click here
Thanks again for your continued support of our research. Do get in touch if you have any further thoughts or suggestions!
You may have taken part in this study a few years ago!
Different types of laughter play an important role in how we communicate and connect with others. Spontaneous laughter is an involuntary response to tickling or humour, whilst conversational laughter is controlled and voluntary. Researchers have found that many people can distinguish between these two types of laughter and can understand the social intention and meaning behind conversational laughter.
Members of the ICN’s Developmental Diversity Lab, including Ceci Qing Cai and Sarah White, were the first to use a brain imaging technique called fMRI (pictured on the left) to explore how autistic and non-autistic adults implicitly process these different types of laughter after hearing ‘funny words’. You may have taken part in one of Ceci’s studies during previous years’ Research Days!
Each participant listened to a total of 200 words paired with either spontaneous or conversational laughter and rated how funny they thought each word was. Both groups found words paired with spontaneous laughter funnier than words paired with conversational laughter. However, measurements of participant’s brain activity revealed that non-autistic adults displayed greater activity in brain areas involving mentalizing (the ability to understand the thoughts and feelings of others) when listening to words followed by conversational laughter compared to spontaneous laughter. However, autistic adults did not show this difference in brain activity when listening to these two types of laughter.
These results suggest that autistic people might find it more difficult than non-autistic people to always understand the intentions behind conversational laughter. This emphasises the importance of using clear communication when autistic and non-autistic people interact to make social interactions easier to navigate. Building on this study, we are currently interested in exploring which types of laughter are best suited to autistic people.
Click here to read the original paper.
The paper is:
Cai, C. Q., Lavan, N., Chen, S., Wang, C., Ozturk, O. C., Chiu R., Gilbert, S. J., White, S. J., Scott, S. K. (2024). Mapping the differential impact of spontaneous and conversational laughter on brain and mind: an fMRI study in autism. Cerebral Cortex, 34(5). https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhae199
For a complete list of publications from the autism@icn group, click here
Thanks again for your continued support of our research. Do get in touch if you have any further thoughts or suggestions!
