Expression and co-regulation of negative emotion in 18-month-olds at increased likelihood for autism with diverse developmental outcomes.
Jessie B Northrup, Kaitlyn B Cortez, Carla A Mazefsky and 1 others
PMID 38407094WHAT IT FOUND
At 18 months, toddlers later diagnosed with autism did not show more negative emotion overall than toddlers with no delay, but their negative emotion was more intense.
Parent calming responses were common and linked to lower chance of distress continuing.
Key findings
01Negative affect was rare, about 6 to 7% of intervals for toddlers with language delay or no delay and about 8% for toddlers later diagnosed with autism, and the groups did not differ significantly in overall negative affect; the autism group had more high intensity negative affect than the no delay group.
02Parents used a co-regulation strategy in about 61% of intervals with negative affect, and the groups did not differ in how often or how many strategies they used; redirection was most common, and no delay parents used more solution-focused responses than language delay parents.
03Negative affect in the current interval was followed by negative affect in the next interval 28 times more often, and a parent co-regulation strategy was followed by negative affect more than two times less often; the carryover was stronger for autism and language delay groups than for the no delay group.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The analysis used 39 infants, and the authors say the small sample may have limited ability to detect subtle differences. The sample was largely White and well educated, and all children had an older sibling with autism, so results may not apply to the broader population. The study looked only at negative emotion, not positive emotion, and emotion regulation involves both. Vocal comfort coding had low reliability because some audio quality was poor. Outcome groups were assigned at 36 months, so the 18-month observations describe children before diagnosis, not diagnosed toddlers at that age. Null findings should be interpreted with caution because the sample was small.
Declared interests
The supplied text lists NIH extramural research support. It does not include a conflict of interest declaration.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the time-series results as proof that parent calming causes distress to stop. They come from a small observational coding of intervals, and the study did not test a parent training intervention.