Morality Of Children With Autism In Pro-Social Contexts Emotional Judgments And Attributions And Intervention Studies

Autism spectrum disorder is a neurodevelopmental disorder that develops at a very young age and can have a very negative impact on children.Moral cognition and moral behavior are subtly linked to moral emotions,and moral emotions can externalize moral cognition in the individual’s mind to moral behavior and thus adapt to moral situations in society,moral-emotional development plays an important role in both the moral and emotional development of children with autism.In recent years,there has been a representative research paradigm on moral emotions at home and abroad,namely,the study of moral emotion judgment and attribution ability.Therefore,it is extremely important to examine the moral emotion judgment and attribution ability of children with autism for the moral emotion development of children with autism.The first purpose of Experiment 1 was to examine the developmental characteristics of moral-emotional judgment and attribution abilities of children with autism and ordinary children in a pro-social moral context and whether there are significant differences in ability between the two groups of children.Statistical analysis of the results showed that the level of moral-emotional judgment and attribution skills was significantly higher in the general group than in the autistic group,and that the moral-emotional judgment and attribution skills developed more slowly in the autistic children so it is indispensable to intervene in the moral-emotional judgment and attribution ability of autistic children,based on which Experiment 2 was further designed.The second purpose of Experiment 2 was to conduct a picture book reading intervention to improve the moral-emotional judgment and attribution skills of children with autism.A child with autism was selected as the subject in the main experiment,and a conversational communication-based picture book reading intervention was developed based on the results of Experiment 1 and the subject’s developmental level.The ABA experimental design of the single-subject experimental design was adopted,i.e.,this means that the experiment is divided into three phases:a baseline period（A₁）,an intervention period（B）and a retention period（A₂）.The experiment used picture book stories of three pro-social moral situations as materials to intervene in the subject’s moral-emotional judgment and attribution ability for 10 weeks.Visual analysis and one-way ANOVA at the end of the intervention revealed that the 10-week intervention had a positive effect on the subjects’moral-emotional judgment and attribution scores,which increased steadily during the intervention period and decreased after the withdrawal of the intervention but were still significantly higher than the baseline period.Therefore,the picture book intervention was effective in improving the moral-emotional judgment and attribution ability of children with autism.It is recommended that a long-term intervention program be established for children with autism even after the end of the intervention,so that the moral-emotional judgment and attribution abilities of children with autism can be further consolidated and developed.