Spontaneous helping behavior of autistic and non-autistic (Pre-)adolescents: A matter of motivation?
Autistic pre-teens help less not because they don't care, but because they can't start the action without a prompt.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Amaral et al. (2019) watched autistic and non-autistic pre-teens in a lab task. Each child saw an adult drop items and struggle to pick them up. The team counted how often kids helped without being asked. They also gave kids a quick survey about how much they care about others.
The goal was to see if autistic youth help less because they lack social drive or because they can't start the action.
What they found
Autistic boys and girls helped less than their typical peers. Surprisingly, their survey scores showed they cared just as much. Caring levels did not predict who helped. The gap seems to sit in the step between wanting to help and actually starting the help.
In short, motivation was fine; initiation was hard.
How this fits with other research
Older work already showed the same initiation gap. Davison et al. (1995) saw autistic children start far fewer peer interactions in daily life. The new lab data match that old field note, but they update the story by ruling out low caring as the cause.
Two small trials show you can fix the initiation piece. Kirkpatrick-Steger et al. (1996) used a fun ten-minute warm-up with toys right before preschool. Both autistic boys then doubled their spontaneous initiations to peers. Conant et al. (1984) trained typical classmates to give quick prompts and models. Autistic students' social bids jumped and stayed high, even with new peers and places. Together these studies supersede the old view that autistic kids are simply unmotivated; instead, they show the behavior can be taught.
Van Hoorn et al. (2017) looked like a contradiction at first. In their game, autistic teens raised prosocial choices after hearing peer feedback. Amaral et al. (2019) saw less helping when no one prompted. The difference is the prompt. When cues are clear and immediate, autistic youth can act; when help must be self-started, they struggle.
Why it matters
You do not need to boost caring; you need to boost starting. Use priming, visual cues, or peer mediators to give a clear entry action. A quick setup right before recess or group work can double social bids with almost no extra staff time. Try it next session and measure initiations, not just feelings.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Young autistic people have a range of social difficulties, but it is not yet clear how these difficulties can be explained. In addition, emerging research is suggesting that autistic girls may differ from boys in terms of their social behaviors, but yet unknown is if they differ in terms of their pro-social behavior, such as helping. The present study investigated spontaneous helping behavior using an in vivo paradigm and related this to participants' levels of social motivation (based on parent reports). Participants were 233 autistic and non-autistic (pre-)adolescents (M = 12.46 years, SD = 15.54 months). Our results demonstrated that autistic girls and boys have lower levels of social motivation compared to their non-autistic peers, but social motivation was unrelated to helping behavior in both groups. Furthermore, when the experimenter needed help, the autistic boys and girls looked and smiled to the same extent as their peers of the same gender, but they actually helped significantly less than their non-autistic peers. However, most autistic youngsters did help, highlighting the great individual differences in autistic individuals. We discuss the possibility that lower levels of helping behavior are due to difficulty initiating action in a social context, rather than lower social motivation. Autism Res 2019, 12: 1796-1804. © 2019 The Authors. Autism Research published by International Society for Autism Research published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. LAY SUMMARY: This study examined the helping behavior of autistic boys and girls (aged 9-16). Many autistic young people did help, but compared to non-autistic individuals, autistic people did not help as much. This study also showed that when people did/did not help, it was not related to their interest in social relationships. It is important to teach young autistic people when and how to help others, to support them making friends.
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2019 · doi:10.1002/aur.2182