Emotion dysregulation in autism: Severity and correlates in early childhood.
Jessie B Northrup, Amy G Hartman, Kristen T MacKenzie and 3 others
PMID 39517126WHAT IT FOUND
58% of autistic preschoolers exceeded a cutoff for fast, intense emotional reactions, and 46% for low positive affect.
Sleep problems, speaking ability, autism traits, and parent depression were associated. No treatment was tested.
Key findings
0158% (492) of children in the autism group (total n = 853) exceeded the reactivity cutoff, and 46% (396) exceeded the dysphoria cutoff.
02After controlling for demographics, speaking ability, and intellectual disability, the autism group had higher reactivity than the no concerns group (+1.12 SD) and the parent concerns group (+0.63 SD), and higher dysphoria than the no concerns group (+0.60 SD) and the parent concerns group (+0.34 SD).
03Within the autism group, sleep problems and speaking ability were the strongest correlates of reactivity, and speaking ability and autism traits were the strongest correlates of dysphoria. More fluent speech was associated with higher reactivity, while less fluent speech was associated with higher dysphoria.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
All emotion dysregulation data and many other variables came from parent report, so the same reporter may have influenced both the emotion scores and the other measures. The data were collected at one time point, so the study cannot show whether sleep problems, parent depression, speaking ability, or autism traits cause emotion dysregulation, or the other way around. Autism diagnosis was almost entirely confounded with recruitment source, because most autism participants came from SPARK and comparison participants came from regional recruitment. The groups differed in race, ethnicity, income, parent education, speaking ability, and intellectual disability; although some were controlled, unmeasured differences may remain. The paper did not use a high-quality measure of developmental ability, and its intellectual disability item was only parent report. The measures were selected from a previous validation study, not designed for these aims, so some relevant factors such as sensory processing or executive functioning were not available. 45% of the autism sample was missing at least one variable for the within-autism correlate analyses. The sample was not representative of the United States population.
Declared interests
The supplied text does not include a conflict-of-interest declaration. It notes NIH support through grant R01 HD079512.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the high emotion dysregulation rates as evidence that a treatment works. The study did not test treatment.