Research: Skill Acquisition in Students with and without Pervasive Developmental Disorder

Authored by Hutzler, Y., and Margalit M. in Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, Volume 3, Issue 3, p. 685-694, (2009).

Article summary (posted Jun 22, 2010):

Students with autism benefit from being included in a mainstream physical education class.

Most people believe that having children with autism in a normal classroom does not slow down neurotypical students, but few studies have looked at this issue. The main purpose of this study was to see how seven junior-high school students with autism learned field hockey skills within a normal classroom. The study also looked to see if the fact that the students with autism were in a normal classroom somehow slowed down the other students in the classroom. The authors noted that the students with autism acquired skills more slowly than neurotypical students. The students with autism did acquire skills more quickly, though, when they were in a normal classroom and their presence did not slow down the neurotypical students.

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You can access the original abstract and the complete paper is sometimes available for free via Google Scholar (look for entries that say "PDF" or "HTML" on the right side of the page).
autism, classroom, education, hockey, mainstream, neurotypical (NT), pervasive developmental disorder (PDD), school
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