The Role of the Broader Autism Phenotype and Environmental Stressors in the Adjustment of Siblings of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders in Taiwan and the United Kingdom.

The analysed sample was 80 mother-sibling pairs in Taiwan and 75 in the UK, lower than the 89 and 85 received because incomplete questionnaires were excluded. Families who volunteered may have been unusually worried or unusually unconcerned about the sibling, so the sample may not represent all families. Recruitment routes differed between Taiwan and the UK, and the groups were not matched on demographic variables, so culture and family background are hard to separate. UK mothers had higher education, professional employment and subjective wealth than Taiwanese mothers, which may explain some differences without culture being the cause. Sibling autism-like traits were measured mainly by mother report, and no sibling self-report of these traits was available, so the same informant may have influenced both trait and adjustment ratings. Closed questionnaires cannot fully explain how autism-like traits and stress operate in daily family life. Cultural response bias may affect self-reports, including socially desirable responding or stigma, so scores may not match actual adjustment. The Chinese versions of some measures had less published psychometric support than the English versions.

Funding was named as the University of Edinburgh and a Taiwanese government scholarship to study abroad. The supplied text does not report author conflicts of interest.

Do not conclude that autism-like traits put siblings at greater risk of adjustment problems. The associations were mainly in mother-reported measures, sibling self-reports did not show them, and the stress model gave only partial support, with reversed interaction patterns.