Differences in ongoing thought between autistic and non-autistic adults

Abstract

Abstract Autistic people may be distinguishable from non-autistic individuals in the content and modality of their thoughts. Such differences potentially underlie both psychological vulnerability and strengths, motivating the need to better understand autistic thought patterns. In non-clinical undergraduates, a recent study found that autistic traits were associated with thinking more in words than images. However, it is unclear whether such differences in thought are present in clinically diagnosed autistic individuals. The current study applied the same methods (multidimensional experience sampling during an N-back task) to examine ongoing thought in autistic and non-autistic adults. We found that autistic individuals showed less variability in the modality of their thoughts between easy and difficult task contexts. While both non-autistic and autistic participants tended to report thinking more in words during the difficult task context, the difference between conditions was significantly smaller for the autistic group. In addition, autistic individuals showed a weaker coupling between task performance and off-task social thinking, a finding that may be related to differences in social processing during the off-task state. Overall, our results provide a clinical replication and extension of previous work, highlighting the differential effects of changing external context on internal mental states in autism.