Relations between social skills and problem behavior of autistic children in different social situations

Insufficient social skills and frequent and intense problem behaviour make the social adaptation of autistic children very complicated. New scientific researches show that there is a relationship between children’ with developmental disorders social skills and problem behaviour, i.e. problem behaviour can replace non-existing social skills. The objective of this study was to examine autistic children’s social skills and problem behaviour and the relationship between them. Emotional and behavioural problems and their relationship with social skills and problem behaviour were also studied. The findings were compared with the data of non-autistic children. 56 6-to-18-year-old (average age 11,11 years) children, 54 of whom attended special education institution and 2 – mainstream school, took part in the research. 28 of them were autistic children with mental retardation, other 28 – non-autistic children with mental retardation. Social skills and problem behaviour were measured by observation in a natural setting. The observation was conducted in two different social situations: first, when the child interacted with an educator, second, when he interacted with a group of children. Emotional and behavioural problems of children were measured using two forms of ASEBA group methodologies: Child Behaviour Checklist (6-to-18-years), designed for parents (CBCL), and Teacher Rating Form (6-to-18-years) (TRF). The results show that mentally disabled children, who use more social skills, show less problem behaviour, and vice versa, children, who use less social skills, show more problem behaviour. However, the relationship between specific social skills and problem behaviour in different social situations is inconstant and might be affected by environmental variables. Autistic children, while interacting with an educator, engaged in activities more often and more often expressed their wishes than while interacting with a group of children. However, in both situations they showed the same amount of problem behaviour. Mentally disabled autistic children can be discriminated from mentally disabled non-autistic children by less frequent instructions’ pursuance and expression of wishes, by more frequent stereotypic behaviour and self-stimulation, and by higher scores in thought, attention, and total problems’ scales according to CBCL and TRF. The results also show that there is a reverse relationship between autistic children’s instructions’ pursuance and engagement in activities, and attention problems according to CBCL, while there was no relationship between problem behaviour and social, thought, attention problems or aggressive behaviour according to CBCL