The Social Inclusion of Children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders

The social inclusion of children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) in mainstream schools is a concern, due to the social difficulties these children typically experience and the negative mental health outcomes associated with poor social inclusion.

Peers are particularly important to the social inclusion process given that they are directly and actively involved in interacting with, accepting and including their classmate with ASD.

A systematic review on how effective social skills interventions involving peers are in improving the social skills of classmates with ASD was conducted.

Eleven single-case studies were reviewed and found to provide moderate evidence for the effectiveness of social skills interventions using peers.

Findings from the review emphasise the important role peers have in the social inclusion of classmates with ASD.

Recommendations include the need for further exploration on the role of peers in the social inclusion of children with ASD, which are developed in the empirical paper.

The empirical paper explores the extent to which male classmates with ASD are included by their mainstream peers.

Two areas of the peers' social cognition were investigated; self and peer interpersonal representations and attributional style, and the influence of gender considered.

One hundred and eighty-four mainstream pupils who had a male child with ASD in their class assessed how much they liked to play with their classmate with ASD. They also completed measures of cognitive representations for the self and peer and of attributional style.

Findings revealed that boys were more accepting of a male classmate with ASD than girls were.

Furthermore, peers' self and peer-related cognitive representations were related to the social inclusion of male classmates with ASD amongst mainstream boys only.

Implications for work with peers and Educational Psychology (EP) practice in promoting the social inclusion of pupils with ASD are discussed.