Paper online! Social connectedness and feelings of loneliness in autistic children

18 June 2024

Autistic children have often been reported as less socially connected in school than their allistic (non-autistic) peers. Yet, limitedly known is how autistic children feel about their social connectedness - do these children experience a deficiency, and thus feel lonelier?

In my new paper now published in Autism, we uniquely examined these questions in special education settings, where these children are not the “minority.” Using sensors, peer nomination, and self-reports, we found that autistic and allistic children were connected to their peer networks to a similar extent, and reported similar levels of loneliness.

However, we showed evidence that autistic and allistic children may construe social connectedness differently. For autistic children, being liked as part of the peer group appears to be a key factor in feeling less lonely in school. Our findings underlie the importance of creating an inclusive school climate and attending to individual differences in social needs.

Read the full, open-access paper here!

Also read this Leiden University news item relevant to this topic.

Visualization of a social network detected by the proximity sensors (RFID) during school recess