Responses to Vignettes Depicting Friendship Transgressions: Similarities and Differences in Children With and Without Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Gillespie-Lynch et al. (2019) showed short friendship-problem stories to two groups of 8- to 11-year-olds. One group had autism, the other was typically developing. After each story the kids told how sad they felt and what they might say or do.

Children with autism said they would feel less sad than peers. They also picked more verbal-aggression strategies, such as name-calling or threats. Both groups agreed that betrayal was the worst kind of friendship hurt.

The result extends Barton et al. (2019), who surveyed older youths and found that those who use both verbal and physical aggression have the most sleep, peer, and family problems. Kristen shows the seed of that pattern is already visible in elementary school.

Dyer et al. (2006) first showed large social-skill deficits in the same age band. Kristen narrows the lens: kids with ASD do not just lack skills, they also weigh emotions differently after a friend hurts them.

Adams et al. (2016) looked at thin-slice video judgments and saw no ASD–TD gap. Kristen used short written stories and did find a gap. The difference is the task: reading brief clips of body language versus imagining yourself in a social conflict.

Social-skills groups often teach what to do when a friend breaks a rule or shares a secret. Add a feelings check: ask the child to rate how sad or angry they would feel, then model sad but assertive language. Targeting both emotion and words can close the gap Kristen found.