Perceptions of Playground Engagement with Peers: How Do Child Reports Compare to Recess Observations for Children with ASD?

Background:   Given their various social impairments, children with autism often have a different experience than typically developing children in unstructured social situations at school, like recess. Children with ASD are more likely to be unengaged or in solitary play than their typically developing peers on the playground. While the majority of the measures used in playground observation studies implement the observations of a third party assessor, the child's report of engagement with peers is also a vital measure of engagement and friendships.  However, child report of social networks and surveys of loneliness among children with ASD often differ from third party observations (Chamberlain, Kasari, & Rotheram-Fuller, 2007; Bauminger, Shulman, & Agam, 2003). The current study builds upon previous research by comparing recess observations of peer engagement with self-report of interactions with peers for the same time period.

Objectives: We aimed to further explore the relationship between perceived and actual peer engagement of children with ASD in public elementary schools during lunchtime and recess.  Furthermore, we examined which self-reported and observed factors of play contributed to greater recess satisfaction for children with ASD.

Methods:  We analyzed part of a larger dataset gathered by the Autism Intervention Research Network on Behavioral Health (AIR-B).  Participants included 76 children with ASD (diagnosis verified by the ADOS) enrolled in mainstream classes from kindergarten through fifth grade (mean age = 8.61) at three different sites across the U.S.  The Playground Observation of Peer Engagement (POPE; Kasari, Rotheram-Fuller, & Locke, 2005) measured the quality of children’s play and peer engagement during a ten to fifteen minute period of recess as rated by a reliable blind observer.  Quality of peer engagement as measured by the POPE was compared to the Child Report of Peer Engagement (CROPE, AIR-B pilot measure), a questionnaire administered after the lunch period by a blind assessor to measure child-reported quality of recess (e.g., number of peers with whom the target child played, number of games played, overall recess satisfaction).

Results:  The findings suggest that playing with a greater number of peers was associated with greater child-reported satisfaction with recess (r = .236, p ≤ .05). No other significant correlations were found between observations of peer engagement and questions from the child survey.  

Conclusions:  The lack of significant correlations between the POPE and CROPE reveals a disparity between children’s perceptions of the playground events and blind observers’ reports.  One possible explanation for these discrepancies may be the wide variation of social awareness among our sample of children who represent a broad spectrum of autism severity despite functioning in the normal range of IQ. They may also flag a difference in perceptions (based on many experiences by a child) and the observers’ limited observations, or to differences in desired or believed perceptions by children despite the reality. These findings highlight the importance of interventions for children with autism that include naturalistic support on the playground, since their difficulties with forming friendships may lead to lower recess satisfaction.