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© 2019. This work is licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.es_ES (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.

Abstract

Los escolares con trastorno del espectro autista (TEA) presentan dificultades en la interacción y comunicación social y rigidez cognitiva y de ejecución que los hace especialmente vulnerables al bullying; sin embargo, la investigación ha sido menos profusa. El propósito del presente trabajo es revisar y considerar los estudios más recientes sobre TEA y acoso escolar. El método utilizado ha seguido las directrices de la declaración PRISMA. La muestra final la conforman 29 artículos que revelan que estos estudios se han realizado con muestras inferiores a 450 escolares con TEA. Asimismo, se señala que existen discrepancias sobre la comprensión que tienen del acoso y los factores que lo predicen, así como que la prevalencia de bullying es superior a la publicada para los escolares normativos. Los resultados se discuten en comparación con revisiones previas y se plantean nuevos retos para el diseño de programas efectivos de intervención psicoeducativa específicos con este alumnado.

Alternate abstract:

School children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) present difficulties in the interaction and social communication and cognitive rigidity and execution that make them especially vulnerable to bullying; however, research has been less profuse. The purpose of this paper is to review and consider the most recent studies on ASD and bullying. The method used has endorsed the PRISMA statement. The final sample is made up of 29 articles that reveal that these studies have been carried out with samples of fewer than 450 students with ASD. Likewise, it is pointed out that there are discrepancies in the understanding of bullying and the factors that predict it and that the prevalence of bullying is higher than the one published for normative schoolchildren. The results are discussed in comparison with previous reviews and new challenges are posed for the design of effective psycho-educational intervention programs specific for these students.

Alternate abstract:

Plain Language Summary

A lot of studies have shown that students with Special Educational Needs (SEN) are especially vulnerable to bullying, constituting a risk factor for this type of student body (Martos & del Rey, 2013; McLaughlin, Byers & Vaughn, 2010). Specifically, students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) present a series of characteristics, such as difficulties in interaction and social communication and cognitive and execution rigidity, that makes them especially vulnerable to this type of violence. Thus, although the prevalence estimates vary from one study to another, they are especially worrisome, with the highest rate reported around 94% in school children with ASD compared to the population with a typical development (Humphrey & Hebron, 2015) or even with respect to another type of SEN (Kloosterman et al., 2013). In this way, previous reviews corroborate these high percentages of prevalence for this type of students (Humphrey & Hebrew, 2015; Maïano, Aime, Salvas, Morin, & Normand, 2016; Schroeder, Cappadocia, Bebko, Pepler, & Weiss, 2014).

However, in recent years there have been significant changes with the new conceptualization of autism where the categories of Asperger syndrome have been eliminated (American Psychiatric Association, 2013) and an important development of prevention and intervention programs on bullying and cyberbullying has emerged, focusing especially on the search for protective factors against this type of violence (Zych, Farrington, & Ttofi, 2018). Therefore, in the present systematic review it is intended to expand and analyse the studies on students with ASD and bullying in recent years to check the impact of the new changes and what the new lines of research with these students are in school environments.

Method

This systematic review has followed the guidelines established by the PRISMA declaration (Moher et al., 2015). The search periods covered the months from June to October 2018, where the following databases were used: Web of Science (WoS), SCOPUS, and CSIC. The terms used in the searches were “bullying” and “autism” with the option “and” to limit the search to the union of both concepts. The criteria that have been followed for the inclusion of articles in the final sample have been the following: a) that they were rigorous scientific works, b) that the sample of the study of the reviewed article consisted of minors or adolescents diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, c) that the context was the educational field, d) that the main object of the research was intimidation or bullying, and, finally, e) that articles were published as of 2014.

A total of 383 articles were found from SCOPUS (203), WOS (176), and CISC (4). However, once the year-of-publication filters were applied, there were 248 studies left. The duplicate works were removed, leaving a sample of 165 articles. Then, both researchers reviewed the titles and abstracts of each of the works, eliminating the studies whose focus was not on the two constructs: autism and bullying. This left a total of 77 documents that were analysed by each of the researchers applying the inclusion criteria that had been described and established previously, leaving 29 articles in the final sample in (see Figure 1).

Results

Firstly, the research on autism and bullying has not been very abundant, highlighting 2018 with eight publications and 2016 and 2014 with seven studies carried out each year. These works are concentrated on only six countries: the USA, Canada, Australia, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. Secondly, all studies were carried out with a sample of students with ASD with fewer than 450 participants. Specifically, 21 of the studies used samples of fewer than 150 schoolchildren with ASD (72.41%). Thirdly, in 15 of the studies, multiple informants (51.72%) were required and in the rest only one informant, of which 12 publications (41.38%) were the informants themselves with ASD and in two (6.90%) information was provided by relatives. Scales were the instrument most frequently used in explorations; specifically, they wer used in 15 of the studies (51.72%). Fourthly, the main results of the studies highlight that: a) there are reasonable doubts about the comprehension that these students have of the phenomenon of bullying, b) there are discrepancies about the factors that predict it, and c) the prevalence of bullying among these students is higher than the prevalence published for normative schoolchildren.

Conclusions and Discussion

The results have shown that, although there is still scientific production on this type of school problem, there are not many studies focusing on school children diagnosed with ASD. At a methodological level, the samples used for studies continue to be small, which means that data are inconclusive, and the results must be taken with caution. Also, some research has sought to understand the understanding of school children diagnosed with ASD of the complex phenomenon of harassment and abuse, but the results are discrepant, what could be due to differences in the methodology used. On the other hand, in most studies the rates of occurrence of bullying continue to be higher in students with ASD than in their peers with typical development in studies comparing both groups (Hwang, Dillon-Wallace et al., 2018; Zeedyk, Rodriguez, Tipton, Baker, & Blacher, 2014). These data are identical to previous reviews (Humphrey & Hebrew, 2015; Maïano et al., 2016; Schroeder et al., 2014). As for predictive factors, new research suggests that internalizing behaviours, specifically anxiety, can predict a higher victimization in school bullying of boys and girls with ASD (Tipton-Fisler, Rodriguez, Zeedyk, & Blacher, 2018), while in behaviour problems with perpetration in harassment phenomena (Fink, Olthof, Goossens, van der Meijden, & Begeer, 2018) these results are in line with previous research (Schroeder et al., 2014).

The limitations of the current systematic review are mainly the heterogeneity of the methodologies and the results found that prevent us from having more conclusive conclusions about the problems treated in schools. Therefore, the results should be taken with caution and it is recommended that they be read and interpreted basically in order to clarify the investigative field of the phenomenon of bullying in boys and girls with ASD. But at the same time it should be noted that the information provided by this review allows us to provide an inspiring knowledge about new scientific challenges that clarify the extent to which social and communicative competences are relevant to coping with the phenomena of bullying.

Details

Title
Los Escolares Diagnosticados con Trastorno del Espectro Autista y Víctimas de Acoso Escolar: una Revisión Sistemática
Author
Falla, Daniel; Ortega-Ruiz, Rosario
Pages
77-90
Section
Research Article
Publication year
2019
Publication date
2019
ISSN
1135755X
e-ISSN
21740526
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
Spanish
ProQuest document ID
2478592920
Copyright
© 2019. This work is licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.es_ES (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.