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Thesis
Relationships between social knowledge, social behavior, and peer victimization in autistic adolescents
Master of Science (M.S.), Drexel University
Apr 2025
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17918/00011059
Abstract
Peer victimization (PV) during youth has profound, lasting effects on a victim's physical, mental, and social wellbeing. Autistic youth are particularly vulnerable to PV, perhaps due to social communication difficulties and perceived deviations from social norms. Social functioning includes two components: social knowledge (e.g., knowing what to do) and performance of social behavior (e.g., flexibly deploying social behavior in a real-world situation). However, little work has explicitly investigated how autism-related differences in social knowledge and behavior differentially relate to PV susceptibility. Thus, the present study examined relationships between self-reported social knowledge, (parent- and self-reported) social behavior, and self-reported PV, then evaluated the relative contributions that social knowledge and performance made in explaining variance in PV, in a sample of 167 autistic and non-autistic youth (ages 11-17 years). Results indicated that Autistic and non-autistic youth significantly differed in social knowledge and parent-reported social behavior but not in self-reported social behavior or PV. Additionally, parent-reported prosocial behavior and social knowledge each exhibited small negative correlations with PV in the autistic group (but not in the non-autistic group or overall sample). Likewise, in autistic youth only, greater social knowledge predicted lower PV. Regarding relative contributions to variance in PV, results in the overall sample and in autistic youth suggested that social knowledge contributed the most to explaining variance in PV, followed by social behavior, whereas in the non-autistic group, the reverse was true. Taken together, results highlight that knowing the "correct" way to act in a given social situation does not necessarily translate to neuronormative social behavior in autistic youth nor does this behavior necessarily yield reduced vulnerability to PV. Results can be also taken to reveal different patterns of reporting on social behavior and PV in autistic and non-autistic youth and their parents. Overall, present findings suggest that social interventions in autistic youth may best foster social success targeting outcomes related to performance of social behavior, in addition to social knowledge alone, while acknowledging the reciprocal roles that both autistic and non-autistic people share in social situations and advocating for the need for broader cultural acceptance of neurodivergent people and neurodiversity in general.
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Details
- Title
- Relationships between social knowledge, social behavior, and peer victimization in autistic adolescents
- Creators
- Jared K. Richards
- Contributors
- Matthew D. Lerner (Advisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Drexel University
- Degree Awarded
- Master of Science (M.S.)
- Publisher
- Drexel University; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Number of pages
- v, 42 pages
- Resource Type
- Thesis
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Psychological and Brain Sciences (Psychology); College of Arts and Sciences; Drexel University
- Other Identifier
- 991022058935604721