How do attention, perception, and internal experience vary in low-autistic trait, high-autistic trait, and autistic people?

Autism research has historically focused on genetics, observable behaviour, and responses to the external world with little attention paid to the subjective internal experiences of Autistic people and those high in autistic traits. Moreover, the historically deficit-based framework of autism has begun to shift toward frameworks that center autistic differences as natural variations in perception, cognition, and social communication and interaction styles. Grounded in this updated perspective, this dissertation examined external perception and internal experience across eight experiments and one documentary film involving Autistic people and individuals with varying autistic trait levels. Chapter 2 examined perceptual experiences including face processing, responses to facial masks, gaze behaviour, and attractiveness judgments. Results from these experiments showed that people across autistic trait levels often perceived and evaluated socially relevant stimuli similarly, even when underlying perceptual strategies differed. In Chapter 3, I moved from external perception to internal experience by exploring the frequency, content, and intentionality of mind wandering using surveys, reading tasks, and resting-state paradigms. Mind wandering is when your attention shifts away from the current ask or environment toward internal thoughts and is sometimes referred to as “daydreaming” or “spontaneously generated thought”. Overall, autistic trait level was not associated with MW frequency, intentionality, motivation, and memory performance. However, higher autistic trait levels were associated with greater guilt- and failure-related thoughts, spontaneous mind wandering, stress, and difficulty sustaining attention, as well as reduced likelihood of endorsing the benefits of mind wandering. No relationship emerged between autistic trait levels and perspective-taking or visual thinking tendencies during mind wandering. Together, these findings suggest that autistic traits may have less influence on mind wandering in the moment than on how internal experiences are interpreted and evaluated. More broadly, this dissertation highlights the importance of examining both perception and inner experience to better understand the everyday experiences of people across the spectrum.