Psychosocial Outcomes in Autistic Children Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Rachel Plak, Ralph Rippe, Inge Merkelbach and 1 others
PMID 37690082WHAT IT FOUND
Autistic children in the Netherlands showed unexpected improvements in behavior and peer problems during the pandemic.
Hyperactivity and conduct issues decreased, while prosocial behavior increased. Emotional problems remained stable, but worsened if the child themselves worried about COVID-19.
Key findings
01Overall psychosocial difficulties, specifically hyperactivity and conduct problems, significantly decreased from pre-pandemic to during the pandemic.
02Emotional problems did not change over time when accounting for education, gender, and age, but increased when children had specific worries about contracting COVID-19.
03Prosocial behavior showed a significant increase over time, although this effect disappeared when adjusting for child and parent worry ratings.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTsWhat 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 sample had a relatively high socioeconomic status, so results may not apply to families with lower income or food insecurity. Data relied entirely on parental reports, which can be influenced by the parent's own interpretation or stress. The first pandemic measurement point was partly retrospective, asking parents to recall behavior from several weeks prior. Some improvements might be due to natural aging rather than the pandemic context itself. Attrition and different participants at each time point may have affected the longitudinal comparisons.
Declared interests
The study was funded by Universiteit Leiden. No commercial conflicts of interest are reported in the provided text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the overall improvement in behavior as a sign that the pandemic was beneficial for autistic children. The study shows that reduced environmental demands may have lowered visible behavioral problems like hyperactivity, but emotional problems remained stable or worsened with anxiety, and the results may not generalize to lower-income families.