Gestures accent and illustrate our communication. Although previous studies have uncovered the positive effects of gestures on communication, little is known about the specific cognitive functions of different types of gestures, or the instantaneous multi-brain dynamics. Here we used the fNIRS-based hyperscanning technique to track the brain…

When people remember together, what one person says can affect what others report. The size of this effect is dependent on the characteristics of the people and how they express their beliefs. The power relationship among people affects much of their social cognition, including the size of this "memory conformity" effect. Some research…

Background: Initiating meaningful moments of interaction with people with profound intellectual disabilities can prove to be difficult for support staff. Exploring the behaviour of support staff that precedes the initiations of behaviour by people with profound intellectual disabilities helps to shed light upon the potential facilitating effects…

Anti-bullying programs can create more positive classroom environments by fostering the development of positive leaders who establish constructive norms. The social identity theory of leadership addresses stability and change within different leader profiles and identifies leader group prototypicality: the extent to which leaders are perceived to…

One of the most prominent social influences on human decision making is conformity, which is even more prominent when the perceptual information is ambiguous. The Bayes optimal solution to this problem entails weighting the relative reliability of cognitive information and perceptual signals in constructing the percept from self-sourced/endogenous…

We examine relationships between interviewers' nonverbal behaviors and adequate responding in face-to-face survey interviews. We videotaped professional interviewers administering face-to-face survey interviews and coded them for three interviewer nonverbal behaviors: smiling, nodding, and direct gaze. These nonverbal interviewer behaviors were…

Evidence-based robotic intervention programmes for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have been limited. As yet, there is insufficient evidence to inform therapists, teachers, and service providers on effectiveness of robotic intervention to enhance social development and participation of children with ASD in a real context. This study…

Societal expectations for social-emotional behavior differ across sexes; however, diagnostic definitions of autism do not account for this when delineating "typical" versus "atypical." This study examines sex differences in autism in one behavior associated with strong gender biases: smiling. Computer vision was used to…

People systematically overlook subtractive changes and favor additive ones when reporting new ideas. In a first preregistered experiment conducted via the Prolific platform among French adults (N = 477), we replicated experiments 2, 3, and 4 in Adams et al.'s study. We replicated the overlooking of subtraction, as participants reported 1155…

This study investigated heterogeneity in language skills of children with autism and their relationship with different autistic social subtypes. Data from 90 autistic and 30 typically developing children were analyzed. Results showed that autistic social subtypes varied in language skill problems (aloof > passive > active-but-odd). There was…

This study examined young children's behaviour predictions in direct reciprocal prosocial situations. Participants aged 4-6 years (N = 60) listened to four stories that addressed the actor's previous behaviour (prosocial/non-prosocial) combined with the partner's behaviour (prosocial/non-prosocial). Then, they made predictions regarding the…

While research on the prevalence of co-occurring autism spectrum conditions (ASC) and trans gender modality (TGM) is available, less is known about the underlying mechanism of this association. Insight is needed to improve treatment of trans autistic people. This review provides an overview of theories on the ASC-TGM link and the available…

Mature social evaluations privilege agents' intentions over the outcomes of their actions, but young children often privilege outcomes over intentions in verbal tasks probing their social evaluations. In three experiments (N = 118), we probed the development of intention-based social evaluation and mental state reasoning using nonverbal methods…

This empirical study examined how subjective norms (SNs) and perceived severity affected teachers' intention to intervene and their intervention behaviors in real-life bullying incidents in primary and secondary schools. A total of 362 teachers who witnessed or were told about bullying incidents participated in this study by completing related…

This study aims to evaluate the relationship between social skills and sensory features, emotion regulation, and empathy in adolescents on the autism spectrum. One hundred and twenty-three adolescents were included in the study (50 autistic, 73 typically developing-TD adolescents). The participants filled out the Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile…