Awareness of Friendships and Rejections: a Comparison Between Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders and Children with Typical Development

Background: Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) have difficulties with social interactions. These difficulties may stem from an impaired self- other-awareness, the ability to have an introspective awareness of her/his own thoughts and to impute the mental states of others. 

Objectives: This study examines whether children with ASD are more rejected by classmates as compared to their typical peers. Second, our study examines the social awareness in terms of friendships and rejections of children with ASD as compared to their typical peers.

Methods: Participants were drawn from a randomized-controlled treatment trial in schools in the greater Los Angeles area that examined the effects of targeted interventions on the peer relationships and social networks of 60 elementary-age children with autism. There were 16 children in first grade, 17 in second grade, eight in third grade, 11 in fourth grade, and eight in fifth grade. Children identified with ASD were from diverse ethnic backgrounds (46.7% Caucasian, 5% African American, 21.7% Latino, 16.7% Asian, and 10% Other) and were predominantly male (90%). All were fully included in regular education classrooms and were an average of 8.14 years old ( SD =1.56), with an average IQ of 90.97 ( SD =16.33). Measures included a friendship survey that determined children's friends, social connections, and rejections following the methods outlined in Cairns and Cairns (1994). Participants were asked to name their friends in their classrooms, and to identify kids they did not want to hang out with. Awareness in this study was defined as the congruency between the way a child perceived her/his social status with classmates versus the way classmates perceived their social status with that child.

Results: Paired-sample t-tests revealed that children with ASD are less likely than their typical counterparts to have their “best friend” nomination reciprocated, t(59) = 4.09, p < .001. Furthermore, children with ASD are more likely than their matched peers to be completely overlooked by classmates that they listed as “best friend”, t(59) = 3.423, p = .001. In regards to rejection, although children with ASD are more likely to be rejected as compared to their typical peers, t(59) = 2.82, p < .01, both groups were similar in their reciprocations of rejection, t(59) = 1.26, p = .211.

Conclusions: Our results show that children with ASD are more likely than their typical peers to inaccurately assume that they are friends with classmates. Although having the belief that they have friends may be helpful to isolated children with ASD, they are more often rejected than their matched peers. Furthermore, children with ASD are just as aware of their rejections as compared to their typical peers, which suggests that the impairment in social awareness of children with ASD is in terms of friendships and not pronounced in terms of rejection. Future studies should examine whether accuracy in social awareness, in the contexts of friendships and rejections, serves a protecting role from feelings of loneliness in children with ASD.