Abstract
Reports of cybercrime being committed by people on the autism spectrum often imply that autism may be more prevalent among cybercriminals than the general population, although this remains unproven. In an online survey of 302 participants, we found that autistic individuals (n = 25) were more likely to report engagement in cybercrime than non-autistic individuals, but this relationship was not mediated by advanced digital skills or deficits in theory of mind. Furthermore, independent of autism diagnosis, autistic traits were not significantly associated with self-reported cyber-criminality. We propose that there may be additional factors moderating the relationship between autism, autistic traits, and cybercrime, such as specific autistic characteristics, understanding of cybercrime, and willingness to disclose criminal activity.
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The data from the study are available at https://osf.io/w8vue/
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Acknowledgments
We thank Kathryn Seigfried-Spellar for providing us with the full version of the CCI-R.
Funding
This research was supported by ARC DP 190100162 and the Hamish Ramsay Fund.
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AL developed the software, supervised data collection, conducted data analyses, and wrote the original draft. NB developed the study concept and design, provided guidance on data analyses and critical manuscript revisions. RLY provided comments on the manuscript. All authors approved the final version of the paper for submission.
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This study was approved by the Flinders University Social and Behavioral Research Ethics Committee (Project No. 5724). All procedures used in this study adhere to the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki (1964).
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Lim, A., Brewer, N. & Young, R.L. Revisiting the Relationship between Cybercrime, Autistic Traits, and Autism. J Autism Dev Disord 53, 1319–1330 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-021-05207-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-021-05207-1