Young Children’s Perceptions of Autistic Peers

• In Event: Poster Session 05
  In Poster Session: PS 05 Topic - Social Cognition

Abstract

From an early age, children infer unwritten rules for behavior from members of their social group. Children’s sensitivity to others’ actions may facilitate cooperation (Schmidt & Tomasello, 2012), but may also lead to disapproval of harmless atypical behaviors. For example, 4- to 6-year-olds who learn that a group eats orange berries disapprove of a group member who eats green berries instead (Roberts et al., 2017). While this tendency to dislike difference decreases with age, it is not completely absent in older children and adults. Non-autistic children and adults, for instance, tend to quickly and negatively evaluate autistic individuals on the basis of their atypical behaviors (Sasson et al., 2017). However, providing information about an autistic individual’s diagnosis may soften these negative impressions (Campbell et al., 2004; Sasson & Morrison, 2017).

Autism stigma has been studied in adults and in mid-to-late elementary school students, but the mechanisms by which stigma develops have received little attention, or whether it is present in children younger than eight years old. In the current study, we investigate how non-autistic 4- to 7-year-olds evaluate peers who behave in ways unusual and characteristic of autism, such as flapping their hands when excited. Guided by prior work with older participants, we also investigate whether providing children with information about autism influences their judgments.

Over a video conferencing platform, we show participants six scenarios of children behaving in typical and atypical ways. Between subjects, we manipulate whether the atypical behavior is attributed to autism (“Label” condition: “This kid had to flap her/his hands because s/he is autistic, which means her/his brain is different from other kids’”) or described with no additional information (“Neutral” condition). After each story, we ask children a Behavior question (rate the behavior from 0 “okay” to 3 “really not okay”) and a Friend question (how much do you want to be friends with that child, from -3 “really don’t want to be friends” to +3 “really want to be friends”).

To address the hypothesis that age group (4-5, 6-7) and condition (Neutral, Label) interact to predict children’s evaluations, we plan to conduct separate 2x2 ANOVAs for responses to the Behavior question and the Friend question. A power analysis using G*Power (Faul et. al, 2007) indicated that N=108 participants are needed to detect a medium effect using this test. As of October 1, we have collected data from N=76 participants (70% of our planned sample size), and we plan to finish data collection by November 2020. When data are collected and analyzed, we expect to find that younger children are more negative in their evaluations than older children, but that children in the Label condition make more positive evaluations than do children in the Neutral condition.

This study is, to our knowledge, the first to document young non-autistic children’s attitudes towards behaviors that characterize autism. The study will also provide an initial evaluation of whether explaining autism to children in this age range effectively increases their acceptance of autistic peers and behaviors.

Authors

• Zoe Sargent Robertson, University of Virginia - Charlottesville
  Presenting Author

• Vikram K Jaswal, University of Virginia - Charlottesville
  Non-Presenting Author