A University College London researcher says stereotypes can be a good thing for autistic kids. Autistic children are unable to understand individuals and why they do things but are better with understanding groups. Stereotyping was able to help them learn, for example, if a woman were used as an example of someone who likes to bake/
Professor Uta Frith of the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience said: “One of the main problems experienced by autistic children is that they are unable to understand why others are doing certain things: what motivates them or what they are thinking and feeling. Most of us have this ability, known as ‘Theory of Mind’.
“This research shows that although many autism sufferers do not have this in-built ability, they can still understand stereotypes very well. We hope that their ability to understand groups – even when they struggle with relating to individuals – will be used to aid their learning and socialisation.”
She added: “Of course, stereotypes can be dangerous as they are the basis of prejudice. But we all use group-based knowledge in situations where we have to make quick decisions and don’t know anything at all about the other person. We hope teachers and carers will consider using concepts about groups of people to help autistic children integrate better into society by playing to their strengths.”
49 primary school children (21 with autism and 28 without) were asked questions based on drawings representing males and females coloured in either pink or brown. The researchers asked questions such as: “Here are two children, David and Emma. One of them has four dolls. Which one has four dolls"” The answer Emma conforms to gender stereotypes, the answer David does not.
Each child completed 36 similar scenario-based questions. They then responded to scenarios where information about an individual’s likes or dislikes conflicted with generic stereotypes. e.g. “Here are two people. This is James and this is Grace. Grace doesn’t like to cook for people. One of these people has baked biscuits. Which person baked biscuits"”
Autistic children with Theory of Mind difficulties performed in the same way as normally developing children in the first task. 75 per cent of the answers children gave – whether they were autistic or not – were in line with commonly held race and gender stereotypes.
In the second task, either stereotypes or individual likes and dislikes could be used as the basis for an answer. Here, autistic children with Theory of Mind problems became confused. Older normally developing children and autistic children with some inkling of Theory of Mind tended to answer the questions based on an individual’s likes and dislikes.
Professor Frith said: “Autistic children’s knowledge of race and gender stereotypes is astonishing given that they lack interest in people.”
Source: University College London