Placebo effect and autism

We all know about the placebo effect, but we don’t really know how it works. It does seem, however, that there’s some mental element to the placebo effect, even to the point that recent studies show that if patients know they are getting a placebo (no double-blind there!), they still exhibit a placebo effect.

A question that occurred to me recently as an interesting angle: do children and adults with varying presentations of autism experience the placebo effect in the same way – meaning under the same circumstances and to the same degree – as folks with NT brains?