For school-aged children, school is the place where they spend most of their waking hours. There, children not only learn in the classrooms during the formal time; a lot of learning opportunities also happen during the informal time outside the classrooms, such as breaktimes in school playgrounds. Through physical activities like running, jumping, and catching balls in school playgrounds, children develop different motor skills (Dapp et al., 2021; Robinson et al., 2015). In the meantime, when moving around the playground, children also have the opportunities to meet and socialise with other peers, through which many emotional and social skills can be acquired and a sense of connectedness may be built (Kohl & Cook, 2013).

However, many autistic children are observed to be sedentary and alone during school breaktimes (Rech et al., 2022; Memari et al., 2013). This may be partly due to difficulties in movements like balancing, catching and throwing objects that many autistic children have (Tyler et al., 2014; Whyatt & Craig, 2012). When in a mainstream school setting where autistic children are the only one or two neurodivergent pupils in class, these difficulties may limit autistic children’s participation in regular physical activities of their allistic (i.e., non-autistic) peers (McCoy et al., 2016), which might also further reduce their opportunities to make peer contact (Pan, 2009).

In this study, we aimed to address this possible link between physical activity and peer contact among autistic children, to understand the extent to which more intense physical activity may contribute to more peer contact. Uniquely, we examined this link in a primary special school in the Netherlands, which was selected because it is attended mostly by autistic children and had a playground recently renovated considering pupils’ needs, making it a possibly more inclusive environment for autistic children. Furthermore, motion and proximity sensing technologies were used to track children’s physical activity and peer contact, respectively. This new sensor-based approach can measure children’s behaviours objectively and continuously throughout their breaktimes, and allows children to ‘speak’ through their tracked behavioural patterns (Nasri et al., 2023). It thus could help capture the dynamic nature of breaktime activities and reflect individual needs. 

A total of 49 autistic children participated (mean age = 9.89 years; 4 girls, 45 boys). They wore a belt mounted with a proximity tag and a motion sensor at their waist during school breaktimes in the school playground. Results showed that these autistic children spent more time in sedentary-to-light physical activities (SLPA) compared to moderate-to-vigorous activities (MVPA), but spent more time in peer contact than alone. Furthermore, to examine how time spent in MVPA contributed to peer contact, we computed two indicators for peer contact based on proximity sensor data: total time in peer contact and number of peer partners. Compared to children who did not spend time in MVPA, those who participated in MVPA - regardless how much - had contact with more peers but spent shorter time with them.

These findings suggest that, to better understand autistic children’s social needs, metrics that can reflect different aspects of social behaviours are required. Furthermore, they support the importance of designing an environment that better addresses the needs of autistic children (Yuill et al., 2007). When school playgrounds are designed to provide different levels of physical activities, they might also afford the diverse social needs both within and between autistic children, and allow autistic children to still have contact with peers even when sedentary.

Forty-nine autistic children (mean age = 9.89 years, SD = 1.85; 4 girls, 45 boys) participated. They all had an official diagnosis of autism and attended the same primary special school in the Netherlands. This school is a ‘Cluster 4’ school for pupils with behavioural, emotional, or psychiatric conditions, and autistic pupils form the majority. Six months before this study, the school had renovated its playground. More diverse equipment was installed, and more green areas were added, aiming to better accommodate the needs of their pupils. During 4 breaktimes (2 breaktimes for 2 days), children were given a belt with (i) a motion sensor that has multi-motion receivers (a BMI160 6-axis accelerometer and gyroscope, and a BMM150 3-axis magnetometer) to track their physical activity intensity, and (ii) an OpenBeacon Radio Frequency Identification Device (RFID) that tracked their face-to-face proximity within 1.5 meters with peers. Two variables were computed for physical activity intensity: “time in sedentary-to-light physical activity (SLPA)” and “time in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA)”. As for RFID data, three variables were computed: total time in peer contact, total time alone (both corrected by detection time), and total number of peer partners (corrected by the total number of children in the playground minus 1). In addition, observation data regarding children’s social status was obtained from 54% of the children to help interpret the RFID data. Statistical analyses were conducted using linear mixed models with maximum likelihood estimation. Significance level was set to p < .05. Multiple imputation was utilised to account for missing data.

In this study, we aimed to understand the extent to which physical activity intensity may contribute to peer contact in autistic children. Our findings were drawn from a primary special school in the Netherlands, which mostly autistic children attend and has a newly renovated playground that aims to accommodate pupils’ needs. In such a setting, our results showed that autistic children spent more time in sedentary-to-light physical activity than in moderate-to-vigorous activity (MVPA), while they spent more time in contact with peers than alone. Also, participation in MVPA was linked to shorter time in peer contact and more peer partners. These results emphasise the need to include methods that can capture different aspects of social behaviours, and the importance of providing a learning environment that addresses autistic children’s diverse needs. School playgrounds designed to provide different levels of physical activities may help respond to different social needs during informal time within and among autistic children.

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