Autistic and Non-Autistic Undergraduates' Perceptions of a Textbook Depiction of Autism

Background: Autistic college students may encounter academic content about autism that is deficit-focused. In this study, we compared how autistic and non-autistic students evaluated such content and the extent to which the content affected their self-esteem.Methods: The final sample included 172 undergraduate students (n non-autistic= 86, n autistic = 86) recruited using Prolific. Participants read a brief vignette about an autistic child taken from a popular psychology textbook. They rated how useful they found the vignette for understanding autism, how useful the average college student would find it, and how offensive and stigmatizing it was. Participants also provided self-esteem ratings before and after reading the vignette and completed three individual difference measures (strength of autistic identity, autism knowledge, ableism critical consciousness).Results: Compared to non-autistic participants, autistic participants rated the vignette as less useful and as more offensive and more stigmatizing. Individual differences influenced these effects in two ways: First, the stronger the autistic participants’ autism identity, the more offensive and stigmatizing they found the vignette to be. Second, participants with greater autism knowledge rated the vignette as less useful. Although average self-esteem ratings did not change after reading the vignette for either neurotype, 39.5% of the autistic sample reported feeling worse about themselves after reading the vignette than before. Conclusion: This study provides insight into how autistic and non-autistic college students react to autism-related academic content, highlighting the roles of identity strength and autism knowledge in shaping these reactions. The findings underscore the need for more inclusive and representative depictions of autism in academic content by revealing significant differences in how autistic and non-autistic students evaluate the same material.