Date Presented Accepted for AOTA INSPIRE 2021 but unable to be presented due to online event limitations.
Adolescents on the autism spectrum have difficulties initiating social interactions, which affects their peer engagement. This study investigated the characteristics of unresponded social initiation among adolescents on the spectrum and their typically developing peers. We investigated the rated characteristics of unresponded initiations among 12 students (six with autism; sixth to seventh grade) and explored the effects of the student group, peer group, and purpose and type of initiations.
Primary Author and Speaker: Yu-Lun Chen
Additional Authors and Speakers: Kristie Patten
PURPOSE: Social participation is an essential area of occupation related to health and wellbeing. However, individuals with Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) have difficulties initiating social interaction, which challenges their social participation. Adolescents with ASC in inclusive education face extreme social challenges as the complexity of social demands increases. To better understand their social challenges, this study aimed to explore the features of unresponded social initiation (in adolescent students with ASC and typical development (TD) in a naturalistic inclusive setting. The research questions were: (1) what are the features of unresponded social initiations of students with ASC, in terms of their recipients, purposes, and types? (2) How are unresponded rates of different social initiations of students with ASC compared with TD?
DESIGN: This descriptive study investigates unresponded social initiations in teenage students with ASC and TD. We observed student interactions in an after-school STEM learning club in an urban public middle school. All students in the club were invited and consented to participate. Participants were 11 students (six with ASC and five with TD) either in the sixth or seventh grade. Students with ASC were verbally fluent and with cognitive abilities at or above average.
METHOD: We video-recorded 15 cub sessions (45 mins for each) and extracted video clips of free activities for analysis by excluding teacher instruction sections. Based on the selected videos and verbatim transcriptions of students' conversations, we observed social initiations made by all participants. Each social initiation of the participants was coded by their purpose (social or functional), type (seeking, sharing, attending, offering, and joking), and the recipient (ASC, TD or more than one recipient), and whether the initiation yielded the recipient's response (responded or unresponded). Chi-square tests were conducted to examine whether the response rate of social initiations was determined by the student group, peer group, and the purposes and type of the initiations.
RESULTS: During the observation, 28% of social initiations made by students with ASC were unresponded by peers. Most of the unresponded initiations were made with more than one peer (54%), followed by a peer with ASC (24%) and TD (19%). Initiations based on social purposes were more frequently not responded to (36%) than those with functional purposes (21%). Among different types of initiations, sharing was most frequently not responded (41%), followed by sharing (21%), offering (20%), attending (18%), and joking (17%). Compared with TD students, students with ASC showed an unexpected lower rate of unresponded initiation (28% in ASC vs. 39% in TD, p = 0.02). Interestingly, initiations by TD students were more frequently unresponded to by students with ASC than those by students with ASC (24% in ASC vs. 49% in TD, p < 0.001), which may imply a more successful interaction within students with ASC than across groups. The unresponded rate of each type of social initiation in students with ASC was similar to students with TD.
CONCLUSION: This study examined unsuccessful social initiation among students with ASC and TD. Missed social initiations in students with ASC were mostly not toward a specific peer and with a social purpose and the nature of sharing personal thoughts and opinions. The result suggests that students with ASC may have difficulties directing their desire of socialization to interactions between dyads. The higher rate of unresponded initiation in TD students toward students with ASC implies a gap between neurotypical and neurodivergent socialization that warrants further investigation.
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