Autistic traits may aid learning in the face of failure

Most people learn better through success than failure. However, as the authors of a recent study in the British Journal of Psychology point out, we inevitably experience many failures in life. Given that failure can discourage many of us from continuing on the path to achieving our goals, understanding the factors that might make people better able to cope with this kind of negative feedback is important.

In their study, Xiujun Li at Shanghai Normal University and colleagues identified one such factor. They observed that, in a learning task, students with relatively high levels of autistic traits were more resilient to feedback focused on negative responses than students who were low in these traits.

The team ran two studies on groups of Chinese undergraduates, who had taken a version of the Autism-Spectrum Quotient, and fallen into either the top or the bottom quartile of the scores of a bigger group. Though those in the top quartile scored relatively highly, they did not meet the criteria for a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder.

In both studies, the participants had to try to learn unfamiliar Korean words. They weren't taught the meanings directly, but rather shown the word in Chinese accompanied by two options in Korean. About half of the students in the first study were told that if they picked the correct Korean word, a smiley face would appear on the screen, but if they got it wrong, there would be no feedback. The rest were told that if they picked the wrong Korean word, a crying face would appear, while if they got it right, there would be no feedback.

The second study was identical to the first, except that instead of smiley or crying faces, a square root symbol signified success and a cross indicated failure. The team used these 'non-social', as well as the 'social' face-based symbols, because research has suggested that autistic people and people high in autistic traits respond differently to social stimuli.

The participants in both trials were then tested on their memory of which Korean word matched the Chinese prompts.

Analyses revealed that in both studies, those low in autistic traits learned better from positive than negative feedback. However, in the first study, students with high levels of autistic traits learnt just as well from negative as positive feedback.

In the second study, the difference in learning performance between the groups that were high vs low in autistic traits after negative feedback reached a marginal level of statistical significance. The team interprets the results as showing a trend towards people high in autistic traits learning just as well from negative feedback as they do from positive feedback.

"These results suggest that for college students, a benefit of having high levels of [autistic traits]  increased resilience and an ability to continue to learn in the face of failure," the team concludes.  

If this is true, it prompts the question, why might this be?

The authors highlight research that suggests autistic people have an atypical reward system, which could make them less affected by negative feedback. They suggest that in their study, negative feedback may have threatened the self-concept of those low in autistic traits, leading to negative emotions, which led them to disengage from learning — while for the other group, this did not happen. "Based on self-concept theory, if negative feedback does not threaten self-concept, intrinsic motivation is not undermined," they write.  

In theory, sensitivity to negative feedback could have important long-term consequences. If experiencing failure is so upsetting that it leads people to withdraw from learning, this could be the first step in a "chain reaction" that makes them more likely to abandon their pursuit of future goals, the team notes. Based on these results, it seems that those with higher levels of autistic traits may be somewhat better insulated from this effect, in general.

Clearly, more research in this field is needed — on people with a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder, as well as a more representative sample of the general population. But these new findings suggest that for people high in autistic traits, resilience to negative feedback may come more naturally than it does for others, the team writes.

Read the paper in full:
Li, X., Conway, C. M., Yin, S., Bai, X., & Xu, D. (2025). Learning in the face of failure: The benefit of autistic traits. British Journal of Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12786

Want the latest in psychological research, straight to your inbox?
Sign up to Research Digest's free weekly newsletter.