Lee, Sierra - Psychology BS Research Paper

RUNNING HEAD: THE IMPACT OF AUTISM ON PROSOCIAL BEHAVIORS__ ____1
Psychology BS Research Paper: The Impact of Autism on Prosocial Behaviors
Sierra Lee, Winter 2016 – Fall 2016
A11299611
Earl Warren College
Faculty Advisor: Leslie Carver
_______________________________ ______________________________
Faculty/Advisor Signature Date

THE IMPACT OF AUTISM ON PROSOCIAL BEHAVIORS 2
Abstract
Social cues are vital to engaging in pro-social behavior. In this study, we compared
typically developing children with children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in
terms of engagement in prosocial behavior. In order to evaluate each participant’s level of
development at the time, we administered the Differential Abilities Scales to each child. We then
performed different tasks during which the child could perform prosocial behaviors. In each task,
we varied how explicit the provided cues were in order to indicate prosocial behaviors were
warranted. We expect typically developing children to pick up on the les explicit cues more
quickly than those with ASD, but expect that the children with ASD would engage at a similar
level to those typically developing when the cue to engage is explicit. At the time of writing this
paper, the study is ongoing and no results are available.

The Impact of Autism on Prosocial Behaviors
Humans are social creatures, and in order to engage with those around us we use social
cues. We use these skills to engage with other people every day, using them to help us
communicate and make connections with each other. We start learning to pick up on and utilize
these social cues to our benefit when we are as young as 12 months, using facial cues to guide
behavior (Moore & Corkum, 1994). In this study, we looked at pro-social behaviors, which are
behaviors that do not benefit the actor, but rather are for the benefit of another individual, such as
comforting, helping, and sharing. These behaviors start to emerge in typically developing
children at around 1 to 2 years of age (Zahn-Waxler, Radke-Yarrow, & Wagner, 1992).
Engaging in prosocial behavior can involve many subtle social cues, in which the actor has to
assume what the other person wants judging by observing behavior, along with the actor wanting
and being able to execute the prosocial behavior (Dunfield, Kuhlmeir, O’Connell, & Kelley
2011). For example, in this study the researcher doesn’t directly ask for help during many of the
tasks, but uses behavioral cues to ask for help such as looking at the child, stating what needs to
be accomplished, or stating what is upsetting her. Typically developing children use these cues
efficiently to engage in prosocial behavior. Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
have more difficulty engaging in these prosocial behaviors (Travis, Sigman, & Ruskin, 2001),
possibly as a result of not understanding when to engage in these behaviors. This deficit has
major consequences: prosocial behaviors are important in promoting social bonding and
adjustments (Coie et al., 1990; Eisenberg, Eggum, & Di Giunta, 2010), leaving those with ASD
at a disadvantage in our social world.
Current research on prosocial behaviors in people with ASD is limited. Travis et al.
(2001) found that children with ASD were less likely to engage in helping and sharing behavior

compared to children with developmental delays. Dunfield et al. (2011) found that children with
ASD were less likely to engage in sharing behaviors, but found no difference in helping or
comforting behaviors, when compared with typically developing children. Liebal et al. (2007)
found a slight tendency for children with ASD to help less than children with a developmental
delay, however it was not statistically significant. Jones and Fredrickson (2010) and Russell et al.
(2012) found that children with ASD had lower prosocial scores in comparison to typically
developing children using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (Goodman, 1997), as
reported caregivers. Lin, Tsai, Rangel, and Adolphs (2012) and Izuma, Matsumoto, Camer, and
Adolphs (2011) tested for differences in sharing in adults with ASD; both found those with ASD
were less likely to share, however the difference was not statistically significant. Sally and Hill
(2006) tested sharing in children, and found no difference in amount shared. However, a
limitation of their study questions these results. They collapsed age groups in the ASD category
but not in the typically developing group, even though their study and previous research
indicates prosocial behaviors are likely impacted with increased age (Fabes & Eisenberg, 1998).
In this study, we examined whether children with ASD have trouble engaging in
prosocial behaviors because they do not pick up on the cues, or if they do not understand
prosocial behavior itself. We administered prosocial tasks with cues ranging from less explicit to
more explicit to typically developing children and children diagnosed with ASD. We
hypothesize that children diagnosed with ASD will not pick up on the social cues given as
quickly as the developing children will, but that the children with ASD will engage a similar
amount when the cues given are explicit.

Methods
Participants
Potential participants were recruited from a database of San Diego parents who indicated
they would be willing to participate in research studies at UC San Diego. At the time of writing
this paper, there were 19 total participants; 17 typically developing participants and 2
participants with ASD. Of all participants, 68% were male and 32% were female, with and
average age of 5.44 years. Both ASD participants were male. 58% of the participants were
identified by their caregiver as Caucasian, and 42% were identified as Hispanic, Latino, Asian,
or mixed ethnicity.
Materials
At the beginning of the study, each participant was administered the Differential Ability
Scales-Second Edition (Elliot, 2007) to determine and control for developmental level. Parents
filled out the Autism Spectrum Quotient (Baron-Cohen, Hoekstra, Knickmeyer, & Wheelwright,
2006), the Social Responsiveness Scale, Second Edition (Constintino & Gruber, 2012), and the
Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (Goodman, 1997) to evaluate levels of Autistic traits
and social behaviors from the perspective of the parents. This was done to determine how
accurate the data collected during the experiment was compared to normal behavior reported
from the parents. The Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule-2 (Lord et al. 2012) was
administered to confirm diagnosis of the participants with ASD.
Procedure
After explaining and detailing the consent form, the parent was given the questionnaires
to fill out while the child began the experiment.

First, the experimenter administered the DAS to the child in the first examination room.
This included the following sections: verbal comprehension, matrices, naming vocabulary,
pattern construction, copying, and picture similarities. Once complete, the child was given three
miniature toy monkeys and told that every child that gets through this room receives the
monkeys as a prize and that they are theirs to keep and take home with them. The child then was
escorted to the next room and was encouraged to bring the monkeys with them.
In the next room, the experimenter turned on the camera and started removing previously
placed crumpled up paper balls from the table. This task (to be discussed later) was the first to be
done in this room. Then, the following tasks were randomized for each participant: the
experimenter spilled a cup of pens, “hit” her foot under the table, participant was asked to engage
in the sticker task, play with blocks, and asked to play with monkeys (awarded in the previous
room). All the tasks except for sticker-sharing were evaluated through a cue-level system,
described in the next paragraph. Each task evaluated one of three types of prosocial behaviors:
sharing, helping, or comforting. Sharing was evaluated by the sticker task, the block task, and the
monkey-sharing task. Helping was evaluated by the paper ball task and the pen-spilling task.
Comforting was evaluated by the experimenter pretending to get hurt and recording the child’s
reaction.
To determine the child’s cue level, the child would be given a score of one, two, or three
depending on when they started to engage in or recognize the cue for pro-social behavior with
the experimenter. After that, the experimenter makes the cues more and more explicit. For the
first ten seconds, the experimenter stared at the stimulus (cue level 1); the next ten seconds, the
experimenter alternated her gaze between the stimulus and the child (cue level 2); and for the
final ten seconds, the experimenter vocalizes that the experimenter needs something to be done

or that something happened (cue level 3). This process stops whenever the participant either
acknowledged the cue to engage or engaged in prosocial behavior. The tasks that had a cue level
system were the paper balls, the comforting task, block sharing, pen helping, and monkey
sharing. The helping tasks (paper balls and pens) were preceded by the experimenter starting to
clean and then giving the cues. The experimenter also kept track of how many items the child
shared or helped to pick up, and what the child said to the experimenter when she got “hurt.”
The child was given an explicit option to share in the sticker-sharing task, and was given
less explicit cues to share in the block and monkey sharing tasks. The explicit option of sharing
in the sticker task would eliminate the possible hurdle of deciphering a less explicit cue. This
would be used as the measure of how much a participant would share when explicitly asked to,
therefore measuring the willingness to engage in prosocial behavior. In the monkey task, the
experimenter told the child that the monkeys they received in the previous room were the last
monkeys available, and the experimenter had wanted to have a monkey. In the block task, the
experimenter looked at her empty toy box and vocalized that she had no more blocks and wants
to make her structure bigger. For both of these tasks, the child has to realize that the
experimenter is subtlety asking for the child to share.
The sticker-sharing task did not involve a cue system, but rather gave the child a chance
to share on their own volition. First, the child was asked to write their name on an envelope.
Then the experimenter showed the child pictures of three different children of similar age and
gender to the child’s. The child was told that these were the experimenter’s three friends that
“could not be there, but really love stickers.” The experimenter then counted out seven stickers
and laid them out in front of the child. The experimenter explained to the child that these stickers
were the child’s, and that they can share none, a portion, or all of them with the “friend,” and that

they can put the stickers they want to keep in their envelope, and the stickers they want to share
in the “friend’s” envelope. Then the experimenter turned around and let the child put however
many sticker in each envelope. This was done three times. In order to make it clear that the child
would do this task more than once, the upcoming envelopes with children’s pictures and the
remaining stickers (seven per “friend”) were placed on the table off to the side.
In the helping tasks, the experimenter does not vocally ask the child for help and simply
starts cleaning up the paper balls or pens. Only in cue level two does the experimenter look at the
child to nonverbally ask for assistance, and then at cue level three vocalizes the need to clean up.
Comforting was evaluated by the experimenter pretending to hurt herself and vocalizing
that she was hurt. The experimenter looked at the child for comfort at level two and vocalized
again that she was hurt at level three. Acknowledgment of the injury was enough to complete the
task.
Results
At the writing of this paper, the study is ongoing and no results are available. We expect
that the children diagnosed with ASD will pick up on cues significantly later than the typically
developing children, but that children diagnosed with ASD will still engage in prosocial behavior
when explicitly prompted to do so in the sticker-sharing task.
Discussion
This study examined why children with ASD have deficits in prosocial behaviors. We
hope to understand whether children with ASD are not picking up the cues for engaging in
prosocial behavior, or if they simply do not understand or are not motivated to engage in
prosocial behavior. We hypothesize that picking up on the less explicit cues to engage in
prosocial behavior are what makes engagement difficult for those with ASD, and not prosocial

behavior as a whole. We expect that those with ASD will not pick up on the less explicit cues to
engage in prosocial behavior in most of the tasks. However, we believe that they will engage in
prosocial behavior if given more explicit cues to engage. We tested this by giving the child a
more explicit cue to engage during the sticker sharing task, and less explicit cues to engage
during the various other tasks. If our hypothesis is correct, professionals working with children
with ASD may be able to create or modify current therapy techniques to specifically target
developing the skills needed to recognize less explicit cues, helping children with ASD better
engage in our social world in general. If this is not the case, the scientific community will still
gain more knowledge about this topic, specifically that it may be more likely that those with
ASD do not want to engage in or understand the concept of prosocial behaviors. Either way,
more research should be done on the subject to get reliable and generalizable results.
There were limitations for this study. We tested a greater amount of males because of the
likelihood of having mostly male ASD participants, which could make the results less applicable
to females. We were conducting this study in an affluent area of San Diego, possibly skewing the
results. In addition, one of the participants with ASD was administered the tasks in their own
home rather than in the lab for convenience reasons, which could have changed their likelihood
of engaging in the prosocial behaviors. We tried to make this experiment as naturalistic as
possible, however there may have been some variables that were not adequately controlled for
(such as the amount of time the participant spent with the experimenter(s), which could alter how
willing they were to engage in prosocial behaviors with the experimenter). Future studies should
account for these flaws, and possibly also come up with a reliable way to measure whether the
participants with ASD understood the aspects of their role (for example, that they get to keep
what is given to them), and possibly measure how they feel about prosocial behavior in general.

Hopefully, from this study in combination with future studies, the scientific community can give
those with ASD more tools to engage in the social world.

References
Baron-Cohen, S., Hoekstra, R.A., Knickmeyer, R., & Wheelwright, S. (2006). The Autism
Spectrum Quotient (AQ) — Adolescent Version Journal of Autism and Developmental
Disorders 36:343-350
Coie, J. D., Dodge, K. A., & Kupersmidt, J. B. (1990). 2 Peer group behavior and social
status. Peer rejection in childhood, 17.
Constantino, J. N., & Gruber, C. P. (2012). Social Responsiveness Scale, Second Edition. Los
Angeles, CA: Western Psychological Services.
Dunfield, K., Kuhlmeier, V. A., O’Connell, L., & Kelley, E. (2011). Examining the Diversity of
Prosocial Behavior: Helping, Sharing, and Comforting in Infancy. Infancy, 16(3), 227–247.
Eisenberg, N., Eggum, N. D., & Di Giunta, L. (2010). Empathy-Related Responding:
Associations with Prosocial Behavior, Aggression, and Intergroup Relations. Social Issues
and Policy Review, 4(1), 143–180.
Elliott, C. D. (2007). Differential ability scales – second edition: Administration and scoring
manual. San Antonio, TX: Harcourt Assessment, Inc.
Fabes, R. A., & Eisenberg, N. (1998). Meta-analyses of age and sex differences in children’s and
adolescents’ prosocial behavior. Handbook of Child Psychology, 3.
Goodman, R. (1997) The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire: A Research Note. Journal of
Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 38, 581-586.
Izuma, K., Matsumoto, K., Camerer, C. F., & Adolphs, R. (2011). Insensitivity to social
reputation in autism. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(42), 17302–
17307.

Jones, A. P., & Frederickson, N. (2010). Multi-Informant Predictors of Social Inclusion for
Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders Attending Mainstream School. Journal of Autism
and Developmental Disorders, 40(9), 1094–1103. http://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-010-0957-
3
Liebal, K., Colombi, C., Rogers, S. J., Warneken, F., & Tomasello, M. (2007). Helping and
Cooperation in Children with Autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders,
38(2), 224–238.
Lin, A., Tsai, K., Rangel, A., & Adolphs, R. (2012). Reduced social preferences in autism:
evidence from charitable donations. Journal of neurodevelopmental disorders, 4(8).
Lord, C., Rutter, M., DiLavore, P.C., Risi, S., Gotham, K., & Bishop, S.L. (2012). ADOS-2:
autism diagnostic observation schedule. Los Angeles: Western Psychological Services.
Moore, C., & Corkum, V. (1994). Social Understanding at the End of the First Year of Life.
Developmental Review, 14(4), 349–372.
Sally, D., & Hill, E. (2006). The development of interpersonal strategy: Autism, theory-of-mind,
cooperation and fairness. Journal of Economic Psychology, 27(1), 73–97.
Travis, L., Sigman, M., & Ruskin, E. (2001). Links Between Social Understanding and Social
Behavior in Verbally Able Children with Autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental
Disorders, 31(2), 119–130.
Zahn-Waxler, C., Radke-Yarrow, M., Wagner, E., & Chapman, M. (1992). Development of
concern for others. Developmental Psychology, 28(1), 126–136.

Lee, Sierra - Psychology BS Research Paper

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Similar to Lee, Sierra - Psychology BS Research Paper

Similar to Lee, Sierra - Psychology BS Research Paper (20)

Lee, Sierra - Psychology BS Research Paper