Validation of the Examination of Autistic Intersubjective Experiences (EAIE)

Introduction: In the past two decades, phenomenological interviews have been used in psychopathological research, mostly in schizophrenia, demonstrating how psychopathology and psychiatry can benefit from phenomenology. For autism-spectrum-condition, there was no such an interview, which is why we designed the Examination of Autistic Intersubjective Experience (EAIE). Methods: In the present study, we conducted the EAIE with 20 autistic and 20 non-autistic individuals. Results: Our results showed considerable differences between the two study groups in the total score and in each domain. For the total EAIE scores, we found good internal consistency, but this was insufficient for the individual domains, with two exceptions. Interrater reliability was almost 0.9, while intrarater reliability was 0.6 after repeating the interview almost two years later. Conclusion: We demonstrated the viability of utilizing the EAIE to assess, quantify, and investigate subjective anomalies in the experience of intersubjectivity among autistic individuals. Due to the low internal consistency, we recommend focusing predominantly on the total scores if EAIE is intended for quantitative assessment of deviations in social interaction rather than for qualitative evaluation.