Detecting dodgy behaviour: The role of autism, autistic traits and theory of mind.

Researchers compared how well autistic and non-autistic adults could spot suspicious or dodgy behaviour. Even though autistic people had more trouble with 'mind-reading' tasks, both groups were equally good at detecting suspicious behaviour. The findings suggest that difficulty understanding others' thoughts (not autism itself) might make someone more likely to be taken advantage of or get into trouble.

This 2023 study compared autistic and non-autistic adults' ability to detect suspicious or 'dodgy' behaviour across various scenarios. Despite autistic participants showing poorer performance on established theory of mind measures, both groups performed equally well at detecting suspicious behaviour. The degree of autistic traits did not correlate with detection ability. However, when combining both groups, individuals with greater difficulty reading others' minds (regardless of autism diagnosis) showed poorer dodgy behaviour detection.

This suggests that theory of mind difficulties, rather than autism per se, may increase vulnerability to criminal involvement or exploitation.

Results suggest interventions should focus on theory of mind skills rather than autism diagnosis when addressing vulnerability to exploitation. Clinicians should assess individual theory of mind abilities rather than making assumptions based on autism status.

Sample size not reported. Study type unclear from abstract. Limited detail on methodology and participant characteristics. Single study findings require replication.

Difficulties in reading others' minds make it difficult to anticipate their future behaviour. It has often been argued that such difficulties contribute to autistic individuals becoming enmeshed in criminal activity. However, supportive scientific evidence is virtually non-existent. We compared the ability of groups of autistic and non-autistic adults of similar intellectual ability to detect dodgy or suspicious behaviour across a wide range of scenarios.

Although the autistic group performed more poorly than the non-autistic group on an established measure of mindreading, there were no group differences in the ability to detect dodginess. Nor did we find any evidence that detecting dodgy behaviour was associated with the degree of autistic traits reported by individual participants. However, when we combined the two groups, difficulty reading the minds of others was indeed associated with poorer detection of dodginess, thus highlighting a characteristic of individuals that may well increase the likelihood of becoming involved in crime or exploited for autistic and non-autistic individuals alike.