Participants Over-Estimate How Helpful They Are in a Two-Player Game Scenario Toward an Artificial Confederate That Discloses a Diagnosis of Autism

This publication is included in the Autistic Autism Scholarship Project. one author of this publication is identified as autistic in the project.

About the autistic author marker

Heasman, B. & Gillespie, A. (2019). Participants Over-Estimate How Helpful They Are in a Two-Player Game Scenario Toward an Artificial Confederate That Discloses a Diagnosis of Autism. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 1349-1349. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01349

Publication date: 11 Jun 2019 Added to AutiHub: 30 Aug 2026 Type: Article Article language: English

This publication is integrated into AutiHub through:

Authors

Publication authors
2
Publication authors identified as autistic
1 / 2 (50.0%)

Abstract

Research on how autistic people are perceived by neurotypical people indicates that disclosing a diagnosis leads to a positive discriminatory bias; however, autobiographical autistic accounts indicate that diagnostic disclosure often results in negative discriminatory behavior. We report on an exploratory study to compare people's self-reported helping behavior with their actual helping behavior toward an assumed autistic collaborator. We led 255 participants to believe that they were interacting online with a real person to play Dyad3D, a maze navigation game where players must work together to open doors, and complete the levels. However, participants were actually playing with an artificial confederate (AC) that is programmed to behave the same way across all interactions. This design enabled us to manipulate the diagnostic status of the AC that participants received prior to collaboration across three conditions: no disclosure, dyslexia-disclosure, and autism-disclosure. We use this method to explore two research questions: (1) is Dyad3D viable in creating a simulated interaction that could deceive participants into believing they were collaborating with another human player online? and (2) what are the effects of disclosing an autism diagnosis on social perception and collaboration? Combined with a post-game questionnaire, we compared differences between diagnostic conditions and differences between self-reported behavior and actual behavior in the game. Our findings show that Dyad3D proved to be an efficient and viable method for creating a believable interaction (deception success rate >96%). Moreover, diagnostic disclosure of autism results in the AC being perceived as more intelligent and useful, but participants also perceived themselves to be more helpful toward the AC than they actually were. We evaluate the strengths and limitations of the current method and provide recommendations for future research. The source code for Dyad3D is freely available (CC-BY-NC 4.0) so that the study is reproducible and open to future adaptation.

Bibliography cited by this reference

Cited references are imported from external metadata sources when they are available. The list may be partial.

Cited bibliography overview

These indicators describe the bibliography cited by this publication. An author name is counted each time it appears in one cited reference, so the same person can be counted more than once. Names not yet linked to an author already present in AutiHub are treated as unknown, not as non-autistic. Last computed: 13 Sep 2026 01:04.

Cited references
68
With a DOI
58
Without a DOI, from raw bibliography text
10
8 / 68 (11.8%) cited references include at least one author identified as autistic.
References with data to complete
8 / 68 (11.8%)
References with detected author names
68 / 68 (100.0%)
Without detected author names
0
Without a structured title
8
Without a stable identifier
10
References with raw author names still to review
0
References with external metadata lookup issues
0
These indicators apply to cited references displayed on this page, after technical duplicates have been merged. A reference without a DOI can still support author statistics when a title and author names are available.
Author names detected in the cited bibliography
172
From DOI or external metadata
172
From validated raw bibliography text
0
Raw names already validated
0
Raw names still to review
0
57 / 172 (33.1%) names are linked to an author already present in AutiHub. 115 / 172 (66.9%) names are not yet linked.
Names linked to a person identified as autistic
9 / 172 (5.2%)
Calculated across all author names detected in the cited bibliography. Among names linked to an author already present in AutiHub: 9 / 57 (15.8%). Distinct people identified as autistic: 5 / 146 (3.4%).
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