This study was done to better understand whether emotional abilities, such as the ability to control or understand your own emotions, are a successful predictor of the school performance of adolescents with and without autism.

The study is a bachelor thesis done by student Lisa Morais Dos Reis of the University of Luxembourg, supervised by Dr. Andreia Costa and M.Sc. Maïte Franco from the Institute for Health and Behaviour of the Department of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences.

When we look at the school success of young autistic people, we see many different results. Some of the adolescents perform just as well as expected or even better, given their IQ. Others, on the other hand, perform worse than expected. The difference in the results can be explained by external factors, such as the students’ well-being in class, or internal factors, such as students’ motivation aspects. Another internal factor is a person’s emotional ability, or the skill to understand and control own emotions and the emotion of others. This is especially important in a school context, as emotional ability allows children to concentrate better on the tasks in front of them. It also helps adolescents to develop friendships with other peers and to stay positive in difficult situations. Many autistic children and adolescents have difficulties distinguishing and understanding other people’s emotions. In fact, alexithymia, a personality trait that makes it difficult for a person to be aware, describe, and understand emotions in themselves and in others, is more common among people with autism than among neurotypical people.

So far, research with neurotypical students shows that emotional ability plays an important role in determining how well a student does in school. Researchers believe that emotional abilities influence a person’s ability to think and learn, which in turn influences success at school. For example, the emotional ability of a person can determine his or her problem-solving skills when found in a stressful situation at school. A good emotional ability can allow the person to remain calm and levelheaded and find a successful solution. The emotional ability is also closely linked to a person’s social skills and the ability to interact with others. A good relationship with classmates is especially important in a school context.

Given the important role that emotional ability plays in school performance, we could expect that, because autistic adolescents have difficulties in different areas of emotional ability, it could explain some of their difficulties in school. However, such a link as not been studied in autistic adolescents. We want to analyze with our study, what relationship exists between emotion abilities and academic performance for adolescents with and without autism. Based on the existing literature, we expect that autistic adolescents will have more emotional difficulties than neurotypical adolescents. Furthermore, we expect that adolescents who have more emotional difficulties will perform worse in school than adolescents with less emotional difficulties.

For more information about this study, please contact us at autisme@uni.lu.