Non-autistic adults often hold explicit and implicit biases toward autism that contribute to personal and professional challenges for autistic people. Although previous research indicates that non-autistic adults with higher autism knowledge and familiarity express more inclusionary attitudes, it remains unclear whether training programs designed to promote autism acceptance and understanding affect subsequent implicit and explicit biases toward autism. In this study, non-autistic adults (N = 238) completed an autism acceptance training featuring factual information and engaging first-person narratives, a general mental health training not mentioning autism, or a no-training control, then responded to surveys assessing their autism knowledge, stigma, and impressions of autistic adults, and completed a novel implicit association task about autism. Non-autistic adults in the autism acceptance training condition reported more positive impressions of autistic adults, demonstrated fewer misconceptions and lower stigma about autism, endorsed higher expectations of autistic abilities, and expressed greater social interest in hypothetical and real autistic people. However, training had no effect on implicit biases, with non-autistic adults associating autism-related labels with unpleasant personal attributes regardless of training condition. These findings suggest that the autism acceptance training program in this study, designed to increase autism knowledge and familiarity among non-autistic people, holds promise for reducing explicit but not implicit biases toward autism.

Lay abstract

Autistic adults face prejudice from non-autistic people. They are often judged unfairly and left out of social activities because of their differences. This can make it difficult for autistic people to make friends and find jobs. Some training programs have tried to teach autistic people to act more like non-autistic people to help them gain acceptance. Fewer have focused on teaching non-autistic people how to be more autism friendly. In this study, we used a short training video that teaches people about autism. The video was created with the help of autistic adults and included clips of real autistic people. We found that non-autistic people who watched this video had better knowledge about autism and showed more autism-friendly attitudes than those who watched a video about mental health or those who did not watch any video. They were more open to having a relationship with an autistic person and had more positive beliefs about autism. However, our video did not affect people’s unconscious attitudes about autism. People in our study connected autism with unpleasant traits, even if they had watched the autism training video. This suggests that teaching non-autistic people about autism may promote more autism-friendly attitudes, but some beliefs may be harder to change.

中文翻译：

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自闭症接受训练对自闭症显性和隐性偏见的影响

非自闭症成年人通常对自闭症有明确和隐含的偏见，这会导致自闭症患者面临个人和职业挑战。尽管先前的研究表明，具有较高自闭症知识和熟悉度的非自闭症成年人表现出更多的包容态度，但尚不清楚旨在促进自闭症接受和理解的培训计划是否会影响随后对自闭症的内隐和外显偏见。在这项研究中，非自闭症成年人（N= 238) 完成了以事实信息和引人入胜的第一人称叙述为特色的自闭症接受培训、不提及自闭症的一般心理健康培训或无培训对照，然后对评估他们的自闭症知识、污名和对自闭症成年人印象的调查做出回应，并完成了一个关于自闭症的新的内隐联想任务。接受自闭症训练条件下的非自闭症成年人对自闭症成年人的印象更积极，对自闭症的误解更少，耻辱感更低，对自闭症能力的期望更高，并对假设和真实的自闭症患者表现出更大的社会兴趣。然而，训练对隐性偏见没有影响，非自闭症成年人将与自闭症相关的标签与不愉快的个人属性联系起来，而不管训练条件如何。

摘要

自闭症成年人面临来自非自闭症人士的偏见。由于他们的差异，他们经常被不公平地判断并被排除在社会活动之外。这会使自闭症患者难以交朋友和找工作。一些培训计划试图教自闭症患者表现得更像非自闭症患者，以帮助他们获得认可。很少有人专注于教非自闭症患者如何对自闭症更友好。在这项研究中，我们使用了一个简短的培训视频，向人们介绍自闭症。该视频是在自闭症成年人的帮助下制作的，其中包括真实自闭症患者的片段。我们发现，与观看有关心理健康的视频或没有观看任何视频的人相比，观看此视频的非自闭症人士对自闭症有更好的了解，并表现出更多的自闭症友好态度。他们更愿意与自闭症患者建立关系，并且对自闭症有更积极的看法。然而，我们的视频并没有影响人们对自闭症的无意识态度。我们研究中的人们将自闭症与令人不快的特征联系起来，即使他们看过自闭症培训视频。这表明，对非自闭症人士进行自闭症教育可能会促进对自闭症更友好的态度，但某些信念可能更难改变。