The impact of first impression on non-autistic children’s willingness to interact with autistic peers

Abstract

The influence of first impressions on non-autistic children’s willingness to interact with autistic peers has not been studied rigorously with an experimental paradigm. Fifty-eight elementary non-autistic children participated in the study. A 2 (diagnosis: autistic children, non-autistic children) × 3 (social cues: face, face-voice, face-behavior) repeated measurement experimental design was conducted to answer the following question: to what extent are non-autistic children willing to interact with autistic peers when they acquire different kinds of social cues from a thin slice? The results showed that participants’ social interaction willingness toward autistic children was significantly lower than that of non-autistic children after short exposure to face and face-voice cues but marginally significantly higher than non-autistic peers after brief exposure to face-behavior cues. Among the three types of stimuli, face-behavior cues had the most significant negative influence on participants’ social interaction willingness toward autistic children, followed by face-voice cues, and the lowest was face cues. This finding implied that autistic children’s facial, vocal, and behavioral features all play roles in forming negative first impressions of them in non-autistic children. Guiding non-autistic children to embrace diversity could help remove the negative first impressions.