Table 1.
Descriptive statistics for measures of cognitive ability, autism traits (autism traits, empathising and systematising) and social-cognitive measures (emotion understanding and social inference) for adults referred for an ASD diagnosis and where the diagnosis was confirmed or disconfirmed
| Measure (cut-off) | ASD diagnosis confirmed | ASD diagnosis disconfirmed | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mean (± SD) | Range | N | Cut-off N (%) | Mean | Range | N | Cut-off N (%) | |
| Cognitive ability | ||||||||
| Digit span (< 4) | 8.73 (± 3.43) | 3–18 | 130 | 4 (3) | 8.24 | 3.57 | 37 | 5 (14) |
| Traits | ||||||||
| Autism* (> 32) | 35.24 (± 7.49) | 12–49 | 132 | 98 (74) | 28.45 (± 9.52) | 4–46 | 38 | 13 (34) |
| Empathy* (≤ 30) | 19.33 (± 10.65) | 1–62 | 132 | 104 (79) | 24.53 (± 13.61) | 4–65 | 38 | 28 (74) |
| Systemising | 63.81 (± 27.20) | 0–129 | 130 | N/A | 55.03 (± 24.44) | 18–121 | 36 | N/A |
| Social-cognitive measures | ||||||||
| Emotion evaluation (> 20) | 22.06 (± 3.74) | 11–28 | 103 | 83 (81) | 22.21 (± 4.79) | 9–27 | 29 | 21 (72) |
| Social inference (> 46) | 48.95 (8.36) | 2–65 | 120 | 88 (73) | 48.70 (± 7.29) | 34–60 | 30 | 22 (73) |
Cognitive ability was measured using the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-IV (WASI-IV;)—Digit Span (Wechsler 2008). The table shows scaled scores (mean = 10 and SD = 3)
*Indicates a significant group difference, p < .01