Anxiety and Interpretation of Ambiguity in Autistic Children, Typical Children and Their Mothers.
Louise Neil, Hannah White, Katy Warren and 1 others
PMID 30406913WHAT IT FOUND
Autistic children and typical children reported similar anxiety and similar interpretations of ambiguous situations.
Mothers of autistic children reported more anxiety in themselves and in their children than mothers of typical children did, and saw their children as more threatened, distressed and avoidant.
Key findings
01Autistic and typical children did not show a significant difference in self-reported anxiety or in self-reported threat, distress and control responses to ambiguous scenarios, while parents rated autistic children as significantly more anxious.
02Mothers of autistic children reported more anxiety in themselves and more threat and less perceived control in their own responses to adult scenarios than mothers of typical children.
03Mothers' own anxiety was very strongly associated with their reports of their autistic children's anxiety, but mothers' and children's self-reported anxiety were not significantly associated.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The sample was small, and some child anxiety-interpretation associations were not significant after a conservative correction for multiple comparisons, so weak associations cannot be ruled out. It was cross-sectional, so it cannot show whether mothers' anxiety and negative interpretations influence children's anxiety, affect how mothers report it, or are linked in another way. Only cognitively able autistic children with verbal IQ above 70 were included, so findings may not apply to autistic children with language or other cognitive difficulties. The study measured anxiety symptoms rather than anxiety disorders, so some interpretation biases might be missed in people without clinically diagnosed anxiety. Parent and child reports differed, especially for typical children, so a single informant may give a different picture of anxiety.
Declared interests
Funding was from the Medical Research Council. The supplied text does not report author conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that autistic children themselves show more anxiety or more negative interpretations than typical children. The children's self-reported anxiety and interpretation scores did not differ significantly; the main differences were in mothers' reports, so parent report should not be read as the child's own experience.