19466
Insight in Social Relationships in Cognitively-Able 6-8 Years Old Children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder
Impairments in social interaction, such as difficulties in forming peer relationships, constitute an important core deficit in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Friendship is defined as an intimate relationship providing companionship, mutual support, and affection. To build and maintain a friendship requires high-level interpersonal skills. Age related norms of these concepts have not yet been thoroughly examined. Additionally, it is still not clear to what degree the social insight skills in cognitively-able children with ASD are different from their peers.
Objectives:
The aim of the current study was to compare the understanding the concepts of friendship and long-term relationships by assessing the coherence and the content of these concepts in cognitively-able groups with ASD and typical development.
Methods:
The study included 60 children, age ranged 6-8 years (M=72.0; SD=7.9 months). The ASD group consisted of 30 children (28 males, 2 females) diagnosed with ASD using standardized tests, all with IQ scores within the normal range (M=99.7; SD=12.1). The control group included 30 typically developing children pair-matched for age and sex, without documented developmental problems. Information on social insight in understanding the concepts of friendship and long-term relationship was retrieved from the Autism Diagnosis Observation Scales (ADOS) test video-tapes for the ASD group, and from recorded interviews on this part of the ADOS for the control group. A coding system for rating the coherence and content of the responses to questions on friendship and long-term relationship, such as marriage, was developed by the researchers. The coherence was divided to coherent and incoherent answers (does not know, incoherent). The content of the responses was judged based on the following answers: no response/does not know, technical, activity/function and emotional descriptions.
Results:
Regarding understanding the concept of friendship, the ASD group had significantly more incoherent responses in comparison to the control group for the item "what is friendship?" (66% vs. 6.7%; P<0.001), and for the item "how a friend is different from an acquaintance?" (56.7% vs. 16.6%; P<0.001). For understanding the concept of marriage, the ASD group gave significantly more incoherent responses (44.7%) in comparison to in the control group (16.6%) (P<0.01). Analyzing the content of the responses to the item "what is friendship?" revealed that the control group reported significantly more emotional (P<0.001) and activity (P<0.05) related content than the ASD group. The control group reported significantly more activity-related content for the items "how a friend is different from an acquaintance" (P<0.01). The control group provided more emotional content and collaborative activities to explain the nature of friendship while in ASD there is more reliance on technical explanations. For long-term relationships, the two groups provided more functional responses than technical and emotional descriptions. However, higher percentage of this type of response was noted for the control group (P<0.05).
Conclusions:
In ASD, significant deficits in understanding the concepts of friendship and long-term relationships are noted even in cognitively-able population. The coherence of the responses and understanding the nature of friendship best discriminates between TD and ASD in 6-8 years age range.