A Scoping Review of School-Based Strategies for Addressing Anxiety, Intolerance of Uncertainty and Prediction in Autistic Pupils

Abstract

In a typical school day, young people need to do many tasks which rely on the ability to predict. Since prediction underpins cognitive and social skills, difficulties with prediction lead to multiple challenges to learning. In this review, we consider the evidence that autistic people often have difficulty making predictions about other people’s behaviour, or understanding what they are required to do, contributing to high rates of anxiety and intolerance of uncertainty. The focus of the review is to consider what we already know about effective strategies used by schools to support learning and social inclusion and to consider how we might build on these approaches. We propose a number of so far unexplored ideas with the potential to build predictive skills and which require evaluation.