Social Interest of Typically Developing Peers in a Child with ASD

Background:

The present study focused on typically developing (TD) children's social interest in a child with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) that was included in their preschool class. Although the literature presents rich evidence on the importance of inclusion for children with ASD, its effects on the TD children, who play a decisive role in the process, are rarely discussed. Inclusion very often elicits first-time encounters between TD children and a child with special educational needs, highlighting the importance of research not only on the clinical impact of inclusion on the ASD preschoolers, but also the effects of mainstreaming on the TD peers.

Objectives:

The first research question was whether the teachers and educational aids (paraprofessionals) are able to distinguish between children who demonstrate social interest and those who avoid social contacts with the child with ASD.  The second question was whether the difference between the two groups of TD children is attributed to Theory of Mind development or to the general social profile of the TD child.

Methods:

110 TD Israeli preschoolers ranging in age from 3 to 6 years old participated in the study. An original questionnaire was designed for reporting on the social relatedness with the ASD child (The Social Relatedness Questionnaire; Zakai- Mashiach, Dromi, & Ziv, 2008) . The teachers and the educational aids were also interviewed. For collecting information on the social profile The Profile of Peer Relations (Walker,2005) was administered . A scale of five tasks (TOM scale; Wellman & Liu, 2004) was used for testing TOM development.

 Results:

Findings indicated that (1) preschoolers' social interest in the child with ASD was detected by teachers and educational aids (2) the number of children who demonstrated social interest increased with age, (3) social relatedness was not explained by differences in the social profile, (4) TOM scores increased with age, but were only partly related to the difference between the two groups of TD participants. Among the three-year-olds better TOM scores, especially in the "Knowledge access" task were related to judgments on social interest in the ASD child. 

Conclusions:

Social inclusion of children who were diagnosed with ASD in regular preschools is an important challenge for professionals and for the community. It is important that future research will focus not only on the consequent positive effects of inclusion on the ASD preschoolers. It is our inclination that future research should also examine the effects of mainstreaming on the cognitive and social development of the TD peers. Gaining better understanding of inclusion in general and social interaction between unequal partners in particular will make this challenge more easily reachable.