Abstract
One reason for treating stereotypic behavior is that it may negatively impact how others perceive the individual displaying the behavior, thus impeding social interactions; however, few studies have directly evaluated this possibility. As a first step toward testing this position, participants (college students) in Study 1 watched 5-min video clips of a child engaging in hand/finger motor stereotypy at varying levels (0%, 17%, 37%, and 40% of the time) while sound was muted. Following each video, participants completed a questionnaire to evaluate their perception of the child. In Study 2, additional participants completed the same questionnaire after watching the same videos with the sound unmuted to determine if the addition of vocal stereotypy altered their perceptions of the child. Results indicate that (a) observers negatively rated the child when he displayed motor stereotypy for 17% or more of a video clip and (b) the addition of vocal stereotypy yielded more negative judgements than motor stereotypy alone.
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Notes
Observers had previously scored motor and vocal stereotypy in these videos using 10-s momentary time sampling.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Marissa Spiwak, Lydia Lindsay, and Corinne Bloom for assistance with data collection.
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JCC co-conceived and co-designed the experiments, collected data for the study, performed the analyses, and co-wrote the paper. JTR co-conceived and co-designed the experiments and co-wrote the paper.
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Coon, J.C., Rapp, J.T. Brief Report: Evaluating College Students’ Perceptions of a Child Displaying Stereotypic Behaviors: Do Changes in Stereotypy Levels Affect Ratings?. J Autism Dev Disord 50, 1827–1833 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-019-03916-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-019-03916-2