From Interaction to Inference: How People Extrapolate Social Information from Thin Slices of Dyadic Interactions

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In our interconnected society, rapid and accurate interpretation of social cues is crucial for understanding the motivations of others. The ability to quickly make these judgements enables observers to assess a social situation and adapt subsequent behaviour, based on the actions and traits of people around them. This ability also allows people to determine suitable responses in new social environments and interpret the behaviours of people they are unfamiliar with. The thin slice paradigm offers a way to investigate how quickly and accurately people make evaluations about social attributes, personality traits or interpersonal dynamics based on minimal, restricted temporal information. Using this paradigm, the first study aims to explore how neurotypical adults and individuals with ASD infer the 'Big Five' personality traits and quality of interpersonal connection within interacting pairs. This will serve as a foundation for subsequent research inquiries which aim to investigate the quantity of information necessary to extract meaningful social insights, and how neurotypical individuals and individuals with ASD differ in how they visually attend to biological motion cues that convey social information. To gain a more comprehensive understanding of social perception and processing within these populations, this research will also analyse regions of the social brain that process social and interpersonal dynamic cues, aiming for a more comprehensive understanding of the variations in social information processing. This research aims to contribute to broader theories of social cognition, whilst enhancing our understanding regarding the variation in the way individuals with ASD process social information.