Subtypes of Aggressive Behavior in Children with Autism in the Context of Emotion Recognition, Hostile Attribution Bias, and Dysfunctional Emotion Regulation.
Simone Kirst, Katharina Bögl, Verena Loraine Gross and 3 others
PMID 34931277WHAT IT FOUND
Parent-rated emotional lability predicted verbal and covert aggression, partly through hostile intent bias.
It also predicted bullying directly. Physical aggression showed no significant links to these factors. Better emotion recognition unexpectedly associated with more hostile bias.
Key findings
01Emotional lability-negativity directly predicted verbal aggression, bullying, and covert aggression, but not physical aggression.
02Hostile attribution bias mediated the link between lability-negativity and verbal or covert aggression, but did not predict bullying or physical aggression.
03Higher accuracy in recognizing facial emotions was associated with a greater tendency to attribute hostile intent to others.
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 study was cross-sectional, so it cannot prove that lability-negativity or hostile bias caused the aggression; the relationship may be bidirectional. Most data relied on parent reports, which may introduce observer bias, especially for aggression and emotion regulation. The sample size was small (60 children), which limited the ability to detect effects, particularly for physical aggression which had low prevalence. There was no typically developing comparison group, so it is unclear if these patterns are unique to autism. The measure of hostile attribution bias may have been better suited for complex social aggression (verbal/covert) than for physical acts, potentially missing specific physical biases.
Declared interests
The study was part of a registered trial funded by the 'stiftung irene' foundation. The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that improving emotion recognition skills will reduce aggression. In this sample, better emotion recognition was associated with more hostile attribution bias. Also, do not generalize these findings to physical aggression, as neither emotional lability nor hostile bias predicted it in this study.