Neuroscience

Autism

Impression management

Biology

Transactional analysis

Developmental psychology

Cognition

Paleontology

Cognitive psychology

Psychology

Neurocognitive

Autism spectrum disorder

Neurotypical

Context (archaeology)

Social psychology

Social cognition

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Social performances pervade human interactions. Some autistic people describe their social performances as ‘camouflaging’ and engage in these performances to mitigate social challenges and survive in the neurotypical world. Here, we reconsider autistic camouflaging under the unifying framework of impression management (IM) by examining overlapping and unique motivations, neurocognitive mechanisms, and consequences. Predictive coding and Bayesian principles are synthesized into a computational model of IM that applies to autistic and neurotypical people.

Reconsidering autistic ‘camouflaging’ as transactional impression management