Brief Report: Impression Formation in High-Functioning Autism: Role of Nonverbal Behavior and Stereotype Activating Information

摘要

Little is known about whether stereotypesinfluence social judgments of autistic individuals, in particularwhen they compete with tacit face-to-face cues. Wecompared impression formation of 17 subjects with highfunctioningautism (HFA) and 17 age-, gender- and IQmatchedcontrols. Information about the profession of a jobapplicant served as stereotype activating information. Thetarget person’s nonverbal behavior was presented as acomputer animation showing two virtual characters ininteraction. Contrary to our hypothesis, HFA participantswere as sensitive to nonverbal cues as controls. Moreover,HFA showed a tendency to evaluate persons more positively.This might indicate a routine HFA apply inimpression formation in order to compensate for theirdeficit in intuitive understanding of nonverbal communicationcues.