Evaluations of Social Interactions By Adolescents with and without ASD

Background:

Engaging in social interactions with unfamiliar peers requires adolescents with and without autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to coordinate multiple abilities, such as managing social anxiety and employing social cognitive abilities (Aiken et al., 2014; Usher et al., 2015; Usher et al., in press). However, less is known about how adolescents evaluate their own interactions with unfamiliar peers. This study aimed to quantify adolescents’ global evaluations of the first few minutes of a social interaction, and to examine dyadic associations between those evaluations and observed behavior.

Objectives:

1. Evaluate how adolescents with and without ASD evaluate brief dyadic social interactions with unfamiliar peers in terms of how well the interaction went overall and how likely they would be to continue a friendship with the peer.
2. Examine the association between adolescents’ evaluations of how well the interaction went and their likelihood to continue a friendship with the unfamiliar peer.
3. Examine dyadic associations between evaluations of the interaction and likelihood to continue a friendship with observed social reciprocity and social initiative during the social interaction.

Methods:

Fifty adolescents interacted in pairs consisting of one adolescent with ASD (M_age=14.66, SD=1.43; M_VerbalIQ=105.00, SD=14.79) and a gender-, age-, and verbal IQ-matched unfamiliar typically developing (TD) adolescent (M_age=14.21, SD=1.34; M_VerbalIQ=108.48, SD=13.83). Dyads were instructed to get to know each other for five minutes. During the interaction, participants were coded for social reciprocity (seeking, eye contact, conversational efficacy, social ease) and social initiative (proportion of time talking, reversed latency to first utterance, reversed latency to first spontaneous utterance, sharing). Immediately following the interaction, each participant responded to two questions on a 5-point scale from 1 (not at all) to 5 (the most): “How well did your interaction with____ go overall?” and “How much would you want to continue a friendship with _____ after today?”

Results:

Adolescents with and without ASD comparably reported that social interactions went well, ASD M=3.80(1.04), TD M=4.00(.96) and that they would continue a friendship with the peer, ASD M=3.24(.93), TD M=3.08(1.19). Ratings of the interaction and likelihood to continue a friendship were significantly associated within person, ASD r(25)=.44, p=.027, TD r(25)=.62, p=.001. Neither rating was significantly associated with age, IQ, or ASD symptoms for either group, ps>.05.

Across both diagnostic groups, adolescents who displayed higher reciprocity rated the interaction as having gone well overall, b=.64, t(33)=2.95, p=.006. Adolescents with higher social initiative rated the interaction as having gone well overall, b=.57, t(41)=2.82, p=.007, and were likely to want to continue a friendship with the peer, b=.71, t(33)=3.17, p=.003.

Adolescents whose peers displayed more reciprocity were likely to want to continue a friendship with the peer, b=.48, t(39)=2.09, p=.043. Those whose peers displayed more social initiative rated the interaction as having gone well overall, b=.46, t(36)=2.22, p=.033.

Conclusions:

Findings reveal comparable associations between positive evaluations of social interactions and observed social behavior for adolescents with and without ASD. Future research investigating how specific aspects of the interaction impact adolescents’ evaluations over time would provide a fuller picture of social dynamics during this developmental stage.