composed of a broad mixture, from adults with personality disorders, to abusive parents,
to parents who did not themselves have clinical problems but whose children had conduct
disorder or sleep disorder. This was felt to be a more appropriate comparison group for the
present sample, given their high level of past and present clinical difficulties as well as
autism. Chi-square tests comparing the present sample to the clinical distributions show
no significant differences for two (χ2 = 0.07, df = 1, p = .79), three (χ2 = 0.30, df = 2, p = .
862) or four categories (χ2 = 1.42, df = 3, p = .70). In every case, one cell had an expected
value below 5; this is because of the low prevalence of secure attachment in clinical
samples. Again, this means that the results should be interpreted carefully, although the
observed and expected values were strikingly similar.
• Will adults with autism respond to the AAI in a way that primarily reflects their states
of mind with respect to attachment, or will their responses be more strongly
influenced by their general discourse style?
Participants’ state of mind scores for the AAI and parallel interviews were compared
using Spearman’s rho correlations, shown in Table 3. It was not possible to do this for
derogation and reflective function/metacognitive monitoring because no participants
scored above 1 on the parallel interview. As can be seen, there is significant agreement
between scales across the two interviews for anger, passivity and lack of memory. No
other variables are significantly correlated across the two interviews.
Wilcoxon signed ranks tests comparing participants’ state of mind scores across
the AAI and parallel interview are summarised in Table 3. Obviously the two interviews
differ for metacognitive monitoring/reflective functioning and derogation, as all
participants scored 1 on these scales in the parallel interview. Both coherence scores are
also significantly higher in the parallel interview.
• How are the AAI responses of adults with autism similar to and different from
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