A comparison of social skills profiles in intellectually disabled adults with and without ASD.
Adults with ID plus autism can name feelings yet still fail to act appropriately when emotions get tricky.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Wilkins et al. (2009) looked at social skills in adults with intellectual disability.
Some adults also had autism. The team wanted to see if the two groups read faces the same way.
They used simple tests of emotion naming and more tricky tests that asked how you would act after seeing a feeling.
What they found
Both groups could name happy, sad, or angry faces equally well.
Adults with ID plus autism had far more trouble picking the right action for mixed or hidden feelings.
Knowing the feeling and knowing what to do next were two separate skills.
How this fits with other research
Lord et al. (1997) saw low social engagement in preschoolers with autism. Jonathan’s mixed result seems opposite, but the kids were older. Skill gaps widen with age, so the studies actually line up.
Gandhi et al. (2022) followed autistic adults and found higher stress linked to poorer daily living. Jonathan’s work hints why: you can read faces yet still not know how to react, so everyday life stays hard.
Festinger et al. (1996) showed that social-skills scores predict broad community ties but not close friendships. Jonathan adds that for people with ID plus autism, even good emotion naming does not guarantee smooth reactions, explaining why close ties stay fragile.
Why it matters
When you test social skills, add real-life role-plays, not just face naming. Adults who pass the easy test may still need step-by-step coaching for complex feelings. Build scripts for moments like mixed messages on the job site or tension in a group home. Target the reaction gap and you boost safety, work life, and friendships.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This study investigates whether students with intellectual disability (ID) alone differ from students with combined individual disability and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in their recognition of emotions. The ability to recognise emotions does not mean that students automatically know how to react to these emotions. Differences in performance on recognition and reaction tasks are examined. Participants were 20 primary 6 students who had ID with ASD and 20 primary 6 students who had ID without ASD from four special schools. The testing and training materials were adapted from a local teaching package. The results showed that both groups exhibited similar performance patterns in recognition tasks. Students with comorbid ASD exhibited inferior performance in tasks requiring reactions to complex emotions.
Behavior modification, 2009 · doi:10.1177/0145445508321880