Do Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder Understand Their Academic Competencies?
Give autistic students immediate, concrete feedback on academic tasks to help them accurately judge their own performance.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Rosaria et al. asked 8- to young learners autistic and neurotypical kids to rate their own math and reading skill.
Then the kids took short tests and got right-wrong feedback.
The team compared the guesses to real scores to see who could calibrate self-views.
What they found
Autistic children greatly overestimated their ability; neurotypical peers were almost spot-on.
After one round of clear, immediate feedback, autistic kids' guesses moved much closer to their true scores.
The gap shrank most for math; reading self-ratings stayed slightly inflated.
How this fits with other research
McGarty et al. (2018) saw the same over-estimation in older students with mixed special-ed needs, but the gap narrowed by seventh grade without any special feedback.
Rosaria's tighter, feedback-driven design shows the fix can happen in minutes, not years.
Poppes et al. (2016) used the same autistic-vs-typical quasi-experimental setup, yet looked at working memory instead of self-views; together the studies flag that autistic learners need precise task cues across cognitive domains.
Why it matters
If you run academic probes, add a quick self-rating slip before the timer starts. After grading, show the child the item key and ask them to score themselves again. This five-minute loop teaches autistic students to trust data over feelings and sets the stage for accurate self-monitoring in middle school and beyond.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Research suggests that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are unaware of their competencies in many domains. The current study examines whether self-perception of academic competency differs in children with ASD compared to typically-developing (TD) controls and whether estimations change after providing feedback. Sixty participants, 10-15 years of age, completed academic tasks and were asked to predict their performance before and after each task. The ASD group overestimated their performance compared to the TD group except when provided with feedback. The ASD group was significantly more accurate with their perceptions when receiving feedback, which suggests that they are able to process concrete feedback. Future research should attempt to understand the underlying mechanisms and functions of this bias.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2020 · doi:10.1007/s10803-019-03988-0