Interviewing autistic adults: Adaptations to support recall in police, employment, and healthcare interviews

During many types of interviews (e.g. in employment, with the police, and in healthcare), we need to recall detailed memories of specific events, which can be difficult for autistic people in response to commonly used questions. This is especially because these tend to be open questions (i.e. very broad). Autistic people have disproportionately high rates of physical and mental health conditions, are more likely to interact with police, and are the most underemployed disability group. However, interviewers are often unsure about how to adapt their communication for autistic people.Our research tested whether different types of prompts enabled autistic people to recall specific memories (memories of a single event within one day). Participants were asked about situations relating to witnessing a crime (e.g. at the bank), physical or mental health scenarios and employment interviews (e.g. a time you've met a deadline).We tested the following: Open questions : basic questions only (e.g. 'tell me about a time you went to the cinema'), Semantic prompting : a general prompt (e.g. 'do you enjoy going to the cinema?') before asking for a specific instance ('tell me about a time you went to the cinema?'), Visual-verbal prompting : asking participants to recall when it happened, who was there, the actions that occurred, the setting , and any objects .With visual-verbal prompting, autistic and typically developing participants' memories were more specific and detailed. Semantic prompting was also effective for employment questions. Our study shows that autistic people can recall specific memories when they are appropriately prompted. Visual-verbal prompting may be effective across different situations.