Understanding Friendships in Elementary Children with ASD

Previous research suggests that autistic youth tend to have fewer friends, to see their friends less, and to have shorter, poorer quality friendships than their non-autistic peers.  To shed some light on why this is the case, we wanted to know if there are differences in what autistic youth expect of their friends, how they respond when friends violate these expectations (which we called ‘transgressions’), and how they define friendship.  

We studied these questions in two ways. First, we asked 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade  autistic and non-autistic children to complete already existing surveys that measured the kinds of things children expect of their friends, and how they respond to friendship transgressions. Second, we asked the two groups of children open-ended questions about what they expect of their friends, how they might respond to friendship transgressions, and how they define friendship. By using both pre-existing surveys and open-ended interviews, we could determine if there were any friendship expectations or responses to friendship transgressions that autistic children thought were important, but were not a part of the surveys.

The autistic and non-autistic participants rated the twelve friendship expectations in the survey similarly for all but one expectation, “my friends should let me know they care about me”. The autistic participants rated this expectation as  more important than did the non-autistic participants.  

There were also many similarities between the two groups in how they predicted they would respond to  friendship transgressions. However, non-autistic children rated feeling sad as a more likely response than did the autistic children, and the autistic children rated verbal aggression (for example, yelling at your friend) as a more likely response than did the non-autistic children. Across the two groups, betraying a friend was considered more serious than being an unreliable partner, or failing to provide help or validation.  

 We also found that, when asked to define friendship, both autistic and non-autistic children brought up similar expectations (i.e, things they thought their friends should do) and transgressions (i.e., things they thought their friends should not do). There was one exception; non-autistic children were more likely to bring up kindness than were autistic children.

Overall, these studies suggest that autistic and non-autistic children think about friendships in similar ways. It is therefore unlikely that autistic children have such different friendship experiences  than their non-autistic peers (e.g., having fewer friendships) because of any differences in friendship expectations, responses to friendship transgressions, or definitions of friendship. The few differences that we did find can help future researchers who want to improve friendship experiences for autistic children. For example, our finding that autistic children were less likely to mention kindness when defining friendships could mean that autistic children experience kindness from others less often- even from others they consider to be their friends.