Emotional functioning and the development of internalizing and externalizing problems in young boys with and without autism spectrum disorder.
Boya Li, Marieke Gn Bos, Lex Stockmann and 1 others
PMID 31549858WHAT IT FOUND
Young boys with autism did not differ from typical boys in internalizing symptoms in the main model, but they had more severe externalizing problems and lower emotional functioning across three years.
Key findings
01Boys with ASD had more severe externalizing problems than TD boys, while the main model did not confirm a group difference for internalizing problems.
02Higher negative emotion expression at first assessment and increases in negative emotion expression were associated with more internalizing problems; improved emotion recognition was associated with fewer internalizing problems.
03For boys with ASD, improvement in basic emotion vocabulary was associated with decreases in externalizing behaviors, whereas the study did not find this association for TD boys.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The study included only boys and only children with IQ scores above 70, so it may not apply to girls with ASD or children with lower IQ scores. All measures were parent questionnaires, so one reporter and one method could shape the associations. The study grouped broad internalizing and externalizing symptoms together, so it may miss differences between specific anxiety, depression, oppositional, or conduct symptoms. Positive emotion expression was excluded because of poor reliability in TD boys, and emotion vocabulary had poor reliability for TD boys at the final time point because scores were near the top of the scale. IQ data were missing for 15% of the ASD sample and 25% of the TD sample. The age effect for internalizing problems disappeared after correcting for multiple comparisons, and the authors said this should be interpreted cautiously.
Declared interests
The research was financially supported by ZonMw's Care for the Young: Innovation and Development program (grant number 80-82430-98-8025) and by Fonds NutsOhra (grant number 0903-055). No competing interests are stated in the supplied text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that improving emotion vocabulary will reduce externalizing behavior. The study found an association over time in boys with ASD who had IQ scores above 70, not a tested intervention effect.