Sara Sarnicki

Date of Award

2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Cook, Peter

Area of Concentration

Biopsychology

Abstract

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been defined and diagnosed in part dependent on social dysfunction or poor fit, but with whom? Have we been measuring fundamental social deficits, or just between-group differences in autistic and non-autistic populations? Only within the past decade have researchers begun to compare interactions between autistic people themselves rather than to non-autistic controls, and this recent work has shown that social interaction and affinity can be quite successful in autistic individuals when interacting with other autistic people. However, this work has only been behavioral, and no studies thus far have examined these interactions neuroscientifically. In this study, I used EEG hyperscanning to correlate the synchrony of autistic participants’ temporoparietal junctions, a brain region important for social perspective-taking. In the first condition, participants worked on a puzzle alone on the opposite side of the room without talking to each other, and in the second condition, participants faced each other and interacted while working on the same puzzle together. After the interaction, participants filled out a rapport form. I hypothesized that there would be greater TPJ synchrony between participants in the second condition. My results did not support my hypothesis; TPJ correlation coefficients were clustered around 0 (no correlation) in the second condition. There was also a significant difference in mean correlation coefficients between conditions. Despite this, supporting the emerging behavioral research between autistic people, the autistic participants were observed to have high interpersonal rapport with each other and the rapport forms reflected this. The significance and interpretation of these results are discussed.

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