17814
Self-Perception in Friendship Nomination in Children with Autism

Thursday, May 15, 2014
Atrium Ballroom (Marriott Marquis Atlanta)
B. L. Williams1, C. Kasari2 and W. Shih1, (1)UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, (2)Center for Autism Research and Treatment, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA
Background:

Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) present with difficulty in establishing friendships. These difficulties become pronounced at school when children try to engage in age-appropriate social relationships, but lack the social and pragmatic skills to do so. As such, they report more loneliness than their neurotypical peers (Bauminger & Kasari, 2000). Because loneliness indicates a children’s desire for relationships, it may be that their desire and self-perception of friends begins early. This study examined child nominations of friendships in their school setting; both nominations of friends, and receipt of nominations from other children. It was hypothesized that children with greater discrepancy between desired friends (nominated and received) would show the least engagement in actual interactions with other children. Research on the relationship between self-perception and peer engagement is warranted to discover the impediments children with autism face developing friendships in school. 

Objectives:

Objectives are to analyze if children with autism with more awareness of potential social connections with peers in school are more socially engaged in play settings than children with autism with less awareness.

Methods:

Participants in this study include 119 elementary school children with a diagnosis of autism in general education classrooms in grades K-5. Children completed a social network and friendship survey (Cairns and Cairns, 1994; Farmer and Farmer, 1996) that generated quantitative data on friendship groups and clusters in their school classrooms. The social network surveys yielded information on social awareness by analyzing the number of “out-degrees,” nominated classroom peers identified as “friends” by children with ASD, and “in-degrees,” nominations of the child with ASD identified as a “friend” by typical peers. Direct observation was collected by a reliable coder using the Playground Observation of Peer Engagement (POPE; Kasari et al., 2005) to assess peer engagement during lunch and recess by a blind rater.  Data were analyzed from entry level measures at baseline and do not reflect treatment effects.

Results:

Analyses revealed a significantly positive Spearman correlation (r = .22, p= .015) between the number of out-degrees and high level peer engagement (games with rules or joint engagement) on the playground. Similarly, a significantly positive Spearman correlation (r = .22, p=.015) was found between children with autism with more in-degrees, or typical peer friendship nominations, and playground engagement.

Conclusions:

Children with autism who nominated more classroom peers as “friends” on their social network survey were more engaged on the playground in direct observation than children with autism who nominated fewer “friends.” Likewise, children with autism who were more frequently nominated by their typical peers were also more engaged in play. These findings indicate that more awareness of peers as friends may translate to more social interaction attempts during lunch and recess. Further research is warranted on the barriers to developing friendships for children with ASD.