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Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

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04-11-2020 | Brief Report

Brief Report: Social Behavior and Special Interests in the Stigmatization of Autistic College Students

Auteurs: Kayden M. Stockwell, Summer Bottini, Vikram K. Jaswal, Jennifer M. Gillis

Gepubliceerd in: Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders | Uitgave 9/2021

Abstract

Autistic people, by definition, differ in social behavior from non-autistic individuals. One characteristic common to many autistic people is a special interest in a particular topic—something spoken about with such frequency and intensity that it may be stigmatized by non-autistic peers. We investigated college students’ interest in interacting with peers described as behaving in ways characteristic of autism (or not), and additionally described as having a special interest (or not). As expected, autistic characters were more stigmatized, but autistic characters with a special interest were not more stigmatized than those without. Only among non-autistic characters was having a special interest associated with greater stigmatization. Findings give further insight into factors influencing the stigmatization of autistic college students.

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To respect community preferences, we use identity-first language to refer to autistic people (Bury et al. 2020; Kenny et al. 2015).

Participants also read and responded to vignette characters with social anxiety characteristics and with (or without) a special interest. These results are outside the scope of the current paper and are not reported here.

Completion time data was examined for outliers (n = 47), defined as scores less than or greater than 1.5 times the inter-quartile range (IQR = 81.93 min; M = 471.27 min, SD = 1648.524 min, Mdn = 63.82 min). Analyses run with and without completion time outliers resulted in the same statistically significant pattern of results, and thus the 47 participants were included in the final dataset.

Data violated assumptions of normality and homogeneity of variance; thus, non-parametric tests were used. Analyses were conducted using R using the RStudio environment (R Core Team 2020; R Studio Team 2018).

Upon reviewer suggestion, we also conducted Point-Biserial Correlations on these data: Participants who endorsed any autism-related education were coded as “Yes” and those who endorsed “No education about ASD” were coded as “No.” The pattern of results was the same as those reported in the text.

The education and exposure questionnaire contained the language “Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)”. We retain the original language the participants were exposed for transparency. Future measures designed by the first author will incorporate community language preferences (Bury et al. 2020; Kenny et al. 2015).

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Titel: Brief Report: Social Behavior and Special Interests in the Stigmatization of Autistic College Students
Auteurs: Kayden M. Stockwell
Summer Bottini
Vikram K. Jaswal
Jennifer M. Gillis
Publicatiedatum: 04-11-2020
Uitgeverij: Springer US
Gepubliceerd in: Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders / Uitgave 9/2021
Print ISSN: 0162-3257
Elektronisch ISSN: 1573-3432
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-020-04769-w

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