Social Vulnerability and Bullying in Children with Asperger Syndrome

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Social Vulnerability and Bullying in Children
with Asperger Syndrome

• Dr Kate Sofronoff
• School of Psychology
• University of Queensland

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Social Intelligence

• Ability to interact effectively with others and
  having self-awareness
• Social skills relies on social intelligence
• Deficits in social intelligence likely related to
  Theory of Mind
• Credulity is a tendency to believe something
  usually a highly questionable statement or claim,
  despite scant evidence
• Gullibility is a vulnerability to being
  tricked or manipulated

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Social Vulnerability

• A person is more likely to be socially vulnerable
  if they have low social intelligence
• Especially if they are credulous and gullible
• Adverse outcomes
• Being the butt of practical jokes
• Talked into doing foolish things
• Being overly trusting and being manipulated
• Believing advertising claims

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Social Intelligence Social Skills

• A young person with ASD has deficits in both
  areas
• Poor insight into the motivations of others
• May be trusting of peers and naïve
• Poor understanding of jokes and teasing and
  meanness
• Difficulties with perspective taking
• Awkwardness in social interactions
• Vulnerable to victimisation and bullying

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What is Bullying?

• The repeated oppression, physical or
  psychological, of a less powerful person by a
  more powerful person or group where there is
  always a power imbalance which makes the
  ill-treatment of the victim possible (Rigby,
  1997)
• Bullying may be direct, as in hitting or verbally
  abusing another person or indirect, as in seeking
  to hurt another by spreading lies about him/her
  or by deliberate and unjustified exclusion.

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Bullying

• Usually occurs with a peer audience
• Verbal bullying more common but also physical
• Destruction or removal of property
• Derogatory gestures or comments
• Gossiping
• Manipulation
• Using comments to humiliate
• Peer shunning or social exclusion
• Often difficult to get agreement on a definition

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How Common is it for typical children?

• About half the Australian students surveyed had
  experienced some form of bullying (38,000
  surveyed, Rigby, 1997)
• 1/6th were bullied weekly
• Most common form of bullying in Australia was
  verbal harassment (name calling, cruel teasing)
• Teacher estimates less than student reports

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Why are Children with Asperger Syndrome often the
Victim of Bullies?

• A child who is trusting and socially naïve is a
  good target for subtle bullying
• Other attributes compound this impulsivity and
  desire for solitude
• Can derive entertainment from reactions
• Bully to provoke a reaction e.g. that gets the
  child into trouble
• Manipulate the child into saying something
  inappropriate to a teacher
• Child who is alone in the playground often a
  target

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Our Study

• Surveyed 133 parents of a child diagnosed with
  Asperger syndrome
• Child aged 6-16 years (115 males, 18 females)
• Measures
• Anxiety
• Behaviour problems
• Anger
• Social skills
• Peer Relations
• Social Vulnerability

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Bullying

• 85 of parents reported some type of bullying
• 46 reported cruel teasing
• 32 reported physical bullying
• 23 reported the use of the childs naivety to
  trick him/her
• 15 reported threatening

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Themes from Parents

• Some widely recognised as bullying
• Physical bullying
• Verbal bullying
• exclusion
• Some not so commonly recognised
• Verbal teasing
• Credulity or deception
• Bullying arising from social deficits
• Cannot tell if peers are joking
• Manipulated because of sensory sensitivities
• Gullibility
• Told to do something that will cause him trouble
• Teacher bullying
• Verbal reprimands
• Exclusion

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Other Measures

• Children reported by parents to be much more
  anxious than a non-clinical group
• Significantly more anger problems than a
  non-clinical group
• Significantly poorer social skills than a typical
  sample
• More problem behaviours than a typical sample

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Relationships between Measures

• Removed 3 items on bullying from the Social
  Vulnerability Scale
• Correlations were significant between the Social
  Vulnerability Scale and all measures (anxiety,
  anger, bullying, social skills)
• Specifically
• Higher scores on SV associated with higher scores
  on bullying
• Lower scores on social skills associated with
  higher scores on SV

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Regression Analysis

• Relationship of bullying with predictors
• Together all variables significantly predicted
  bullying
• Only Social Vulnerability predicted bullying on
  its own
• Anger, anxiety, social skills and behaviour
  problems failed to independently predict bullying

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What does this mean?

• The fact that a child is vulnerable through being
  credulous and gullible (naïve and trusting)
  increases the likelihood that s/he will be
  targeted by bullies
• Poorer social skills will likely contribute
• Impulsivity (quick to react) will likely
  contribute
• Other attributes specific to an individual child
  will likely contribute

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Social Understanding

• Often an emphasis on social skills training
• It is more complex than social skills
• Social intelligence
• Theory of Mind
• Motivations of others
• Emotion regulation
• Different levels of relationship
• Trying new things
• Giving and receiving compliments
• Where best to do this type of intervention?

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Bullying Programs

• Research demonstrates very poor results with
  typical populations
• Current research to engage bystanders may have
  better results
• Basis of this research is that the majority of
  students are bystanders
• Increase the capacity to respond more
  appropriately
• Help seeking
• Problem solving

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Future Developments

• Program for whole school
• Increase awareness of individual differences
• Increase tolerance of differences
• Clear definition of bullying by everyone
• Engage with bystanders
• Groups for children with AS
• Increase social understanding
• Manage emotional regulation
• Careful measures of outcomes taken by observation
  as well as report

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Questions?

• Dr Kate Sofronoff
• kate_at_psy.uq.edu.au