UC Santa Barbara

A quasi-experimental group design with repeated measures at pretest and posttest was employed to examine the effect of teaching with picture books about autism on improving typically developing children's acceptance and attitude toward children with autism in this study. The participants were children with autism and their typically developing peers in two regular elementary schools, one from Hangzhou (as experimental group) and the other from Ningbo (as control group). A six-week long teaching with picture books about autism was carried out for the thirty-six typically developing children in the experimental group. The typically developing children's attitude toward their classmate with autism was assessed before and after the experiment for both experimental and control groups. The results indicated that teaching with picture books about autism improved the peer's acceptance of children with autism in three domains: basic understanding, emotional attitude, and behavioral tendency, with high social validity. However, the quality of peer relationship between children with autism and their typically developing peers was not increased significantly during the study.