@inproceedings{mankarious-etal-2026-mirroring,
title = "Mirroring Minds: Asymmetric Linguistic Accommodation and Diagnostic Identity in {ADHD} and Autism {R}eddit Communities",
author = "Mankarious, Saad and
Zeid, Nour and
Ait Hou, Iyad and
Hwa, Rebecca and
Zirikly, Ayah",
editor = "Zirikly, Aya and
Bar, Kfir and
MacAvaney, Sean and
Ireland, Molly and
Ophir, Yaakov and
Atzil-Slonim, Dana and
Varadarajan, Vasudha and
Bedrick, Steven and
Desmet, Bart",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 10th Workshop on Computational Linguistics and Clinical Psychology ({CLP}sych 2026)",
month = jul,
year = "2026",
address = "San Diego, California, USA",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.clpsych-1.23/",
pages = "282--297",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-421-7",
abstract = "Social media research on mental health has focused predominantly on detecting and diagnosing conditions at the individual level. In this work, we shift attention to intergroup behavior, examining how two prominent neurodivergent communities, ADHD and autism, adjust their language when engaging with each other on Reddit. Grounded in Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT), we first establish that each community maintains a distinct linguistic profile as measured by the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) dictionary. We then show that these profiles shift in opposite directions when users cross community boundaries: features that are elevated in one group{'}s home community decrease when its members post in the other group{'}s space, and vice versa, consistent with convergent accommodation. Finally, in an exploratory longitudinal analysis around the moment of public diagnosis disclosure, we find that its effects on linguistic style are small and, in some cases, directionally opposite to cross-community accommodation, providing initial evidence that situational audience adaptation and longer-term identity processes may involve different mechanisms. Our findings contribute to understanding intergroup communication dynamics among neurodivergent populations online and carry implications for community moderation and clinical perspectives on these conditions."
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Mirroring Minds: Asymmetric Linguistic Accommodation and Diagnostic Identity in ADHD and Autism Reddit Communities
%A Mankarious, Saad
%A Zeid, Nour
%A Ait Hou, Iyad
%A Hwa, Rebecca
%A Zirikly, Ayah
%Y Zirikly, Aya
%Y Bar, Kfir
%Y MacAvaney, Sean
%Y Ireland, Molly
%Y Ophir, Yaakov
%Y Atzil-Slonim, Dana
%Y Varadarajan, Vasudha
%Y Bedrick, Steven
%Y Desmet, Bart
%S Proceedings of the 10th Workshop on Computational Linguistics and Clinical Psychology (CLPsych 2026)
%D 2026
%8 July
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C San Diego, California, USA
%@ 979-8-89176-421-7
%F mankarious-etal-2026-mirroring
%X Social media research on mental health has focused predominantly on detecting and diagnosing conditions at the individual level. In this work, we shift attention to intergroup behavior, examining how two prominent neurodivergent communities, ADHD and autism, adjust their language when engaging with each other on Reddit. Grounded in Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT), we first establish that each community maintains a distinct linguistic profile as measured by the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) dictionary. We then show that these profiles shift in opposite directions when users cross community boundaries: features that are elevated in one group’s home community decrease when its members post in the other group’s space, and vice versa, consistent with convergent accommodation. Finally, in an exploratory longitudinal analysis around the moment of public diagnosis disclosure, we find that its effects on linguistic style are small and, in some cases, directionally opposite to cross-community accommodation, providing initial evidence that situational audience adaptation and longer-term identity processes may involve different mechanisms. Our findings contribute to understanding intergroup communication dynamics among neurodivergent populations online and carry implications for community moderation and clinical perspectives on these conditions.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.clpsych-1.23/
%P 282-297
Markdown (Informal)
[Mirroring Minds: Asymmetric Linguistic Accommodation and Diagnostic Identity in ADHD and Autism Reddit Communities](https://aclanthology.org/2026.clpsych-1.23/) (Mankarious et al., CLPsych 2026)
ACL