Abstract

PAULA, Cristiane Silvestre; BELISASIO FILHO, José Ferreira  and  TEIXEIRA, Maria Cristina Triguero Veloz. Did students conclude undergraduate degree in psychology with a good training in autism?. Psicol. teor. prat. [online]. 2016, vol.18, n.1, pp. 206-221. ISSN 1516-3687.

Psychologist is a key‑professional in the identification/assistance of people with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Therefore, the main objective of the current study was to describe the level of knowledge on ASD of undergraduate students in Psychology. It is a cross‑sectional study with 85 undergraduate students in Psychology from five public and private universities of São Paulo. Participants answered a questionnaire with 11 structured questions and main results were: 1. good knowledge in the overall sample about clinical­‑intervention aspects, but insufficient knowledge on Epidemiology and etiology; performance slightly superior on; 2. the clinical‑intervention topic of students from private universities (average 3.2 x 2.5; p = .01); and 3. on the Epidemiology topic of students who had concluded a scientific initiation (average 3.4 x 2.3; p = .01). This study points out to the need for continuous updating of curricula of Psychology undergraduate courses to prepare future professionals to properly assist people with ASD.

Keywords : autism; knowledge; undergraduate students in psychology; health human resource training; training.

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