On Wednesday, 30 July 2025, the Cambridge University Autism Research Centre hosted Dr Yonat Rum, Professor at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, for a hybrid seminar—both in person and via Zoom—titled “Searching for a ‘Double Empathy Solution’: Mixed‑Neurotype Social Interactions in Educational Settings, Empathic Accuracy, and the Role of Disclosing Autism Diagnosis.” In this presentation, Dr Rum drew on her postdoctoral work at the Autism Research Centre (2020–2023) and her current lab at Hebrew University to share insights from a large-scale systematic review of qualitative studies and two experimental projects employing the Empathic Accuracy paradigm.

Systematic Review of Mixed‑Neurotype Interactions in Schools

Dr Rum and her colleagues conducted a PRISMA‑guided systematic review of 107 qualitative studies involving 1,799 participants across kindergarten to high school in 27 countries. They synthesized only the original results sections—excluding authors’ interpretations—to map how autistic and non‑autistic students experience everyday social exchanges.

• Manifestations of Mixed Interactions: The most frequently reported feature was loneliness, often experienced by autistic students even when physically included in groups. Bullying was prevalent in primary and secondary settings, especially during unstructured times like recess and physical education.
• Role of Autistic Identity: Two dynamics emerged: how autistic traits are perceived by peers and teachers, and the effects of disclosing one’s diagnosis. Disclosure was linked to more supportive responses and clearer understanding among classmates.
• Support and Intervention: Teacher-led accommodations and peer‑mentoring programs showed promise in fostering more positive interactions.
• Key Contexts: Physical education and unstructured social periods were both high‑risk for negative encounters and opportunities for strengths‑based engagement. Online interactions offered autistic students a safer space to connect over shared interests.

When Dr Rum’s team overlaid these themes with references to mental health, they found that loneliness and camouflaging (masking autistic traits) were most strongly tied to poor outcomes. Camouflaging had a twofold impact: masking led to increased distress, and hiding mental‑health struggles delayed support until crises arose.

Empathic Accuracy Experiments

Building on the “double empathy problem” framework (Milton et al., 2022), Dr Rum’s lab adapted the empathic accuracy paradigm to include autistic storytellers—filling a gap in previous work that featured only neurotypical targets.

• Paradigm Overview: Participants (N = 235) watched short videos of autistic and non‑autistic individuals recounting personal emotional stories. Both targets and observers provided continuous ratings of felt emotion moment by moment, enabling correlation‑based measures of empathic accuracy.
• Key Findings:
  • Both autistic and non‑autistic observers performed above chance in tracking emotional balance for all targets.
  • A trend‑level interaction suggested autistic raters were slightly more accurate when judging autistic storytellers, offering partial support for the double empathy hypothesis.
  • Self‑reported empathy did not mirror behavioral accuracy: non‑autistic participants rated themselves as more empathic overall, masking nuanced performance patterns.
  • In emotion‑specific analyses, autistic raters outperformed non‑autistic peers in identifying anger in non‑autistic targets and alertness in autistic targets.

The Impact of Diagnosis Disclosure

In a follow‑up experiment (N = 271), Dr Rum’s team manipulated whether non‑autistic observers were informed of a target’s autism diagnosis. Disclosure consistently boosted both self‑reported empathy and empathic accuracy toward autistic targets. However, its effect on observers’ willingness to engage socially with the target varied across subgroups, underscoring complex dynamics between understanding and social drive.

Conclusions and Future Work

Dr Rum emphasized that making “invisible” aspects of mixed‑neurotype interactions more visible—through both qualitative mapping and precise laboratory paradigms—can inform interventions in educational contexts. Her forthcoming research, funded by the Israeli Science Foundation, will extend these methods to child populations within mainstream schools, aiming to co‑develop strategies that promote genuine mutual understanding.

The Autism Research Centre (ARC) at the University of Cambridge is a world-leading hub dedicated to understanding autism through cutting‑edge research in genetics, cognition, and developmental psychology. By integrating large‑scale cohort studies with experimental work, ARC advances our knowledge of the autism spectrum and informs evidence‑based interventions, policy, and practice worldwide.

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