It takes two to tango: Understanding Autistic people's mental states and facial expressions

只有32%的自闭症患者有有偿工作，而非残疾人的这一比例为80%。自闭症患者就业不足的一个原因被认为是他们在社交和互动方面存在困难，而非自闭症患者在理解他们方面存在困难。之前的研究要求自闭症患者在没有真正的社交互动的情况下做出“摆姿势”的面部表情。这些摆姿势的面部表情并不能反映自闭症患者和非自闭症患者之间社交交流的复杂性。自闭症患者摆出的面部表情也比他们自发产生的表情更不典型。自发的面部表情告诉我们，在工作场所等现实环境中，自闭症患者是如何回应非自闭症患者的，以及如何被非自闭症患者理解的。关于熟悉程度对自闭症患者面部表情影响的研究很少，涉及面对面社交互动的研究就更少了。为了真正理解自闭症患者和非自闭症患者之间发生的沟通失败，以及这些失败受社会熟悉程度的影响程度，我们观察自闭症患者和非自闭症患者以自然的方式互动是很重要的。这可以帮助我们更好地理解自闭症患者的不同沟通方式，影响理解方式的因素，以及我们如何利用这些信息使更多的自闭症患者获得就业机会。

Only 32% of autistic people are in paid employment, compared to 80% of non-disabled people. Onereason for the under-employment of autistic people is thought to be the difficulties they have with socialcommunication and interaction, and the difficulties that non-autistic people have in understanding them.Previous research has involved asking autistic people to produce 'posed' facial expressions in theabsence of real social interaction. These posed facial expressions do not reflect the complexity of socialcommunication between autistic and non-autistic people. The posed facial expressions of autistic peoplealso appear less atypical than the expressions they produce spontaneously. Spontaneous facialexpressions tell us more about how autistic people respond to, and are understood by, non-autisticpeople in real-life settings such as the workplace.Little research has been conducted into the effect of familiarity on the facial expressions of autisticpeople, and even less has involved face-to-face social interactions. To truly understand thecommunication failures that take place between autistic and non-autistic people, and the degree towhich these are influenced by social familiarity, it is important that we observe autistic and non-autisticpeople interacting together in a natural way.This could help develop our understanding of the ways in which autistic communication differs, thefactors which affect how they are understood, and how we can use this information to enable moreautistic people to access employment.