Altruistic helping in young children with ASD: A preliminary study.

Manfredi et al. (2021) watched preschool and early-grade children during play.

They compared kids with autism to kids with Down syndrome. Both groups had similar IQ scores.

The team counted how often each child gave spontaneous help, like handing over dropped objects.

Children with autism helped far less than peers with Down syndrome.

The more severe the autism traits, the fewer helping acts the child showed.

Even with matched intelligence, the autism group still lagged in altruistic helping.

Townsend et al. (2021) saw no sharing gap between autistic and typical preschoolers when the friend was right there. Mirella’s task had no adult watching, so the social cue was weaker. This difference may explain the seeming clash.

Schroeder et al. (2014) found first-graders with autism gave as much comfort as typical peers. Their task was clear and adult-led. Mirella’s free-play set-up asked for self-started help, a harder skill.

Eussen et al. (2016) also used Down syndrome peers and showed autistic kids imitate fine when they choose to, but struggle when asked. The same pattern—can do when cued, less when spontaneous—shows up again in helping.

If you want helping behavior, start with highly-structured, cue-rich drills. Fade prompts slowly and add peer models. Track autism severity; kids with higher scores may need extra trials before helping becomes automatic.