coder trained and certified as reliable.

Procedure

Participants were invited to a single interview session with one researcher, which lasted a
total of around three hours and included breaks between measures as necessary. After
obtaining informed consent and collecting demographic information, the measures were
administered in the following order: AAI, ADOS, WASI, the Eyes task, Strange Stories
and the parallel interview. Twelve participants had recently (within the last year)
completed the WASI in other research, and six had completed the ADOS, so in these
cases participants gave permission for their scores to be obtained from the other
researchers. Because of time constraints, six participants did not complete the parallel
interview and three did not complete the Strange Stories. One parallel interview was lost
due to tape malfunction. One participant completed twelve items of the Eyes task then
asked to stop, so a score was pro-rated.

Results

Demographics

Participants comprised twelve men and eight women, all white European and aged from
19 to 60 years old (mean age 34). The age at which they had been given an autism
spectrum diagnosis ranged from 4 to 58 years old, and the time elapsed since the diagnosis
ranged from 0 to 16 years, with a mean of 6 years. The fact that most diagnoses were so
recent is probably accounted for by the fact that fifteen participants had been given a
diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome, which has only been included in the DSM since 1994.
Four others had been given diagnoses of autism or high-functioning autism, and one of
atypical autism. Half of the participants had received their diagnoses in national autism
specialist centres, while most of the remainder had been diagnosed in local or tertiary
health services.

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