Loneliness among students with special educational needs in mainstream seventh grade.
Seventh-grade students with autism feel the loneliest in inclusive classes, and their own social self-concept is the key target.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Bossaert et al. (2012) asked seventh-grade students to fill out a short loneliness scale.
The class rosters included kids with autism, kids with motor or sensory disabilities, and typically developing peers.
The team compared the three groups to see who felt most alone at school.
What they found
Students with autism scored highest on loneliness.
They felt lonelier than both typical classmates and classmates with other disabilities.
For students with autism, how they saw their own social skills mattered more than how many friends they actually had.
How this fits with other research
Kasari et al. (2011) saw the same pattern one year earlier.
Their social-network maps showed most students with autism sitting on the edge of classroom friendship groups, so the lonely feelings line up.
Schwab (2015) widened the lens to any student with special needs in Austria and still found lower social participation, proving the problem is bigger than autism alone.
Bauminger et al. (2003) adds a twist: students with autism often start conversations but cannot keep them going, so the loneliness gap is not for lack of trying.
Why it matters
Inclusive seating is not inclusive belonging.
Check how students with autism view their own social skills; a low self-view predicts loneliness better than friend counts.
Boost sustained peer engagement, not just buddy numbers, and pair this with empathy lessons for the whole class.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The goals of this study were twofold. The first aim was to explore loneliness prevalence in typically developing students, students with ASD and students with motor and/or sensory disabilities in mainstream 7th grade in Belgium. The second aim was to explore the relations between number of friends, friendship quality, social self-concept on the one hand and loneliness on the other for each of these three groups, and to compare them across groups. In this study, 108 students with special educational needs (SEN; i.e., 58 students with ASD and 50 students with motor and/or sensory disabilities) were matched to 108 typically developing classmates. Students with ASD reported more loneliness than typically developing students and students with motor and/or sensory disabilities. Loneliness prevalence for typically developing students and students with motor and/or sensory disabilities did not differ significantly. Factors related with loneliness differed between typically developing students and students with SEN (i.e., students with ASD and students with motor and/or sensory disabilities). For students with SEN, same-sex social self-concept was related with loneliness, but not, as for typically developing students, number of friends and opposite-sex social self-concept. Also friendship quality had a marginally significant effect on loneliness feelings for students with SEN. Implications for further research and practice are discussed.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2012 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2012.05.010