Autistic people show poor processing of social signals (i.e. about the social world). But how do they learn via social interaction? 68 neurotypical adults and 60 autistic adults learned about obscure items (e.g. exotic animals) over Zoom (i) in a live video-call with the teacher, (ii) from a recorded learner-teacher interaction video and (iii) from a recorded teacher-alone video. Data were analysed via analysis of variance and multi-level regression models. Live teaching provided the most optimal learning condition, with no difference between groups. Enjoyment was the strongest predictor of learning: both groups enjoyed the live interaction significantly more than other condition and reported similar anxiety levels across conditions. Some of the autistic participants were self-diagnosed—however, further analysis where these participants were excluded showed the same results. Recruiting participants over online platforms may have introduced bias in our sample. Future work should investigate learning in social contexts via diverse sources (e.g. schools). These findings advocate for a distinction between learning about the social versus learning via the social: cognitive models of autism should be revisited to consider social interaction not just as a puzzle to decode but rather a medium through which people, including neuro-diverse groups, learn about the world around them. Trial registration Part of this work has been pre-registered before data collection https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/5PGA3

中文翻译：

---

自闭症成年人与神经正常成年人一样，通过社交互动受益并享受学习

自闭症患者对社交信号（即关于社交世界）的处理能力较差。但他们如何通过社交互动学习呢？68 名神经正常成年人和 60 名自闭症成年人通过 Zoom（i）通过与老师的实时视频通话，（ii）从录制的学习者与老师互动视频和（iii）从录制的老师那里了解了晦涩的项目（例如外来动物） -单独的视频。通过方差分析和多级回归模型对数据进行分析。现场教学提供了最优化的学习条件，组间没有差异。享受是学习的最强预测因素：两组人都比其他条件更喜欢现场互动，并且在不同条件下报告相似的焦虑水平。一些自闭症参与者进行了自我诊断，然而，排除这些参与者的进一步分析显示了相同的结果。通过在线平台招募参与者可能会在我们的样本中引入偏见。未来的工作应该通过不同的来源（例如学校）调查社会环境中的学习。这些发现主张区分学习社交与通过社交进行学习：应该重新审视自闭症的认知模型，将社交互动不仅视为一个需要解码的谜题，而且视为人们（包括神经多样化群体）学习的媒介关于他们周围的世界。试用注册 本工作的部分内容已在数据收集前进行了预注册 https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/5PGA3