The Role of Emotion Regulation on Co-occurring Psychopathology in Emerging Adults with ASD.
Anna S Charlton, Isaac C Smith, Carla A Mazefsky and 1 others
PMID 30875017WHAT IT FOUND
Young adults with ASD who had anxiety or depression reported more involuntary emotion regulation and less voluntary emotion regulation than those without.
Caregiver reports did not show the same pattern. This was a small baseline study, not a treatment test.
Key findings
01Young adults with ASD and an anxiety disorder self-reported more involuntary emotion regulation and less voluntary emotion regulation than those without an anxiety disorder.
02Young adults with ASD and unipolar depression self-reported more involuntary emotion regulation and less voluntary emotion regulation than those without unipolar depression, while caregiver reports did not differ.
03Caregiver-reported internalizing and externalizing symptom scores differed across four emotion-regulation groups. The low involuntary/high voluntary group had lower internalizing scores than the high involuntary/low voluntary group and the high involuntary/high voluntary group, and lower externalizing scores than the low involuntary/low voluntary group and the high involuntary/high voluntary group.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The sample was small, with 27 participants, so the study could not examine very high or very low emotion-regulation levels. The analyses were exploratory and the tests were not adjusted for multiple comparisons. The data were baseline associations from a treatment trial, not treatment outcomes, so they cannot show that emotion regulation caused anxiety or depression. Self-reported emotion regulation differed by diagnosis, but caregiver-reported emotion regulation did not, and caregiver-reported symptoms were used while self-reported symptoms were not collected. The sample was mostly male and White, of average or better cognitive ability, and recruited from one rural region, so results may not apply to other autistic adults.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that teaching voluntary emotion regulation strategies will reduce anxiety or depression in young adults with ASD. The study analyzed baseline data from 27 participants, did not test a treatment, and found that self-reported voluntary strategy use was not associated with symptom scores.