Zaniboni exposed autistic participants and a control group to three thermal scenes in office-like living labs during winter, with and without a view out. Under neutral conditions both groups felt neutral. Under the colder and the warmer conditions the autistic group was more uncomfortable, and more of them reported discomfort at the extremities, hands and feet. Without a view out, the average thermal sensation vote of the autistic participants was −1.71 in the cold scene and 1.53 in the warm one, against −0.85 and 0.90 for the controls in exactly the same rooms. A natural view out reduced the discomfort of the autistic participants. The measured physiological parameters did not explain any of the difference in perception.
Noble surveyed 83 autistic adults, 134 neurotypical controls and 59 people with other conditions affecting sensory processing. Autistic respondents reported more discomfort, more stress and less safety in both home and workplace, and the odds of avoiding buildings were 8.8 times the control group’s. The factors that separated the groups most were people and the noise of people, then glare and electric light. Temperature mattered to both groups equally.
Tomczak asked 140 autistic respondents to rate proposed accommodations across four areas: effective communication, time management and organisation of work, stress and emotion management, and sensory sensitivity. Two solutions tied at the top of the sensory list, both at 4.79 out of 5: arranging the office around the needs of autistic people, and letting each person personalise their own workplace. Eighty per cent of the respondents were women and 86 per cent were employed.
MacLennan ran seven online focus groups with 24 autistic adults and asked which public places are hardest. Supermarkets, restaurants and cafés and pubs, high streets and town centres, public transport, healthcare settings and shops and shopping centres came up most often as sensorially disabling. Outdoor spaces, some retail shops, museums and concert venues came up as easier. MacLennan asked about public places specifically, so the harder list is of places people go to and not places they work.
Fallea treated 50 autistic children in Italy, aged nine or ten, all with mild intellectual disability, verbal language and at least two decayed teeth, in two different rooms: a conventional one and one adapted for sensory needs. Twenty per cent were treated successfully in the conventional room and 68 per cent in the adapted one. It is a dental clinic and not a workplace, and the same 50 children were treated in both rooms.
Kuo and Faber Taylor asked parents across the United States to rate the after-effects of 49 common after-school and weekend activities on their children’s attention-deficit symptoms, comparing the same activities carried out in green outdoor settings, built outdoor settings and indoors. Green outdoor activities reduced symptoms significantly more, and the finding held across age, sex, income, type of community, region and diagnosis. The paper states the limitation itself: a national but non-probability sample, and the abstract available here does not say how many parents answered.
Noble’s 276 respondents and Tomczak’s 140 are the largest samples here, and both are online surveys. Fallea’s 50 children were treated in both conditions, which makes it the strongest design. MacLennan worked with 24 people in focus groups. Zaniboni’s living lab study and Kuo’s parent survey both report no participant count in the abstracts available here.