Autistic adults benefit from and enjoy learning via social interaction as much as neurotypical adults do

Table 1 Demographics for the dataset from Experiment 1, 2 and combined

Experiment 1 (N = 46)	Neurotypical (NT) group N = 26		Autistic group N = 20		NT versus Autistic group
Experiment 1 (N = 46)	Mean	SD	Mean	SD	t-test	p-value
Age	29.85	9.90	27.79	9.22	0.71	0.48
Verbal fluency (Spot the word)¹	44.73	6.23	47.63	6.71	− 1.49	0.14
Non-verbal reasoning (Matrix reasoning item bank, MaRs-IB)²	61.64	16.98	64.48	18.57	− 0.52	0.60
Mentalising (Animated Triangle)³	9.62	1.87	8.74	2.35	0.88	0.18
Autistic Quotient (AQ)⁴	19.19	7.29	33.37	6.73	− 6.65	< 0.0001

Experiment 2 (N = 82)	Neurotypical group (NT) N = 42		Autistic group N = 40		NT versus Autistic group
Experiment 2 (N = 82)	Mean	SD	Mean	SD	t-test	p-value
Age	27.50	4.91	27.63	5.13	0.13	0.89
Verbal fluency (Spot the word)¹	44.54	8.46	45.73	9.83	− 0.59	0.56
Non-verbal reasoning (Matrix reasoning item bank, MaRs-IB)²	61.37	17.26	63.08	18.68	− 0.43	0.67
Mentalising (Animated Triangle)³	8.93	2.22	9.37	1.85	− 0.44	0.33
Autistic Quotient (AQ)⁴	19.98	6.74	28.39	8.60	− 4.93	< 0.0001

Combined (N = 128)	Neurotypical (NT) group N = 68		Autistic group N = 60		NT versus Autistic group
Combined (N = 128)	Mean	SD	Mean	SD	t-test	p-value
Age	28.49	7.27	27.58	6.62	0.73	0.46
Verbal fluency (Spot the word)¹	44.61	7.63	46.33	8.95	− 1.17	0.24
Non-verbal reasoning (Matrix reasoning item bank, MaRs-IB)²	61.47	17.02	63.52	18.50	− 0.65	0.51
Mentalising (Animated Triangle)³	9.19	2.10	9.17	2.03	0.08	0.94
Autistic Quotient (AQ)⁴	19.67	6.91	29.97	8.33	− 7.60	< .0001

Sample size (N), age, AQ score and performance on background battery tests for neurotypical (NT) and Autistic groups. Note that the higher the AQ score, the greater the autistic traits. 1. Baddeley et al. [3] 2. Chierchia et al. [11] 3. Livingston et al. [40] 4. Baron-Cohen et al. [4]
Italic values indicate for p-values

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