'No idea of time': Parents report differences in autistic children's behaviour relating to time in a mixed-methods study.
Daniel Poole, Emma Gowen, Ellen Poliakoff and 1 others
PMID 33926273WHAT IT FOUND
Parents of autistic children reported significantly lower scores on time management and planning compared to parents of neurotypical children.
Qualitative descriptions highlighted three key differences: struggles with learning time concepts, inflexible planning for the future, and time perception heavily influenced by the child's specific interests.
Key findings
01Parents of autistic children reported significantly lower scores on the It’s About Time questionnaire compared to parents of neurotypical children.
02Qualitative analysis identified three central themes in parents' reports of autistic children's time-related behaviours: temporal knowledge, prospection, and monotropism.
03Parents described problems relating to time as having a considerable impact on the well-being of autistic children, whereas such problems were described as negligible for neurotypical children.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The It’s About Time questionnaire used is not a validated measure and does not assess a single clearly operationalised construct. Data relies entirely on parent report, which may be influenced by knowledge of the child's diagnosis and cannot capture the child's own first-person experience of time. The groups were not matched for IQ, so differences in intellectual functioning could not be ruled out as a contributing factor to the reported time-related difficulties. Written open-ended responses did not allow for follow-up questions to clarify ambiguous answers.
Declared interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the lower IAT scores as evidence of a specific, isolated deficit in 'time perception' or a validated clinical diagnosis. The measure used is not validated, and the qualitative themes suggest that time difficulties are intertwined with anxiety, planning rigidity, and attentional focus on interests, rather than being a simple sensory or cognitive timing error.