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Gepubliceerd in: Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 4/2021

16-07-2020 | Original Paper

Explaining Variance in Social Symptoms of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Auteurs: Diana Alkire, Katherine Rice Warnell, Laura Anderson Kirby, Dustin Moraczewski, Elizabeth Redcay

Gepubliceerd in: Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders | Uitgave 4/2021

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Abstract

The social symptoms of autism spectrum disorder are likely influenced by multiple psychological processes, yet most previous studies have focused on a single social domain. In school-aged autistic children (n = 49), we compared the amount of variance in social symptoms uniquely explained by theory of mind (ToM), biological motion perception, empathy, social reward, and social anxiety. Parent-reported emotional contagion—the aspect of empathy in which one shares another’s emotion—emerged as the most important predictor, explaining 11–14% of the variance in social symptoms, with higher levels of emotional contagion predicting lower social symptom severity. Our findings highlight the role of mutual emotional experiences in social-interactive success, as well as the limitations of standard measures of ToM and social processing in general.
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Voetnoten
1
Throughout this paper, we use “social difficulties,” “social impairment,” “social dysfunction,” and “social symptoms” interchangeably, with all four referring to behaviors (or lack of behaviors) that characterize the social dimension of the diagnostic criteria of ASD—for example, reduced initiation of social interactions, reduced social-emotional reciprocity, and abnormal nonverbal communication.
 
2
We use identity-first language because this is preferred by many autistic self-advocates (Brown 2011).
 
3
We refer to the constructs measured by the Strange Stories and Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test as verbal-cognitive and visual-affective ToM, respectively, to highlight the fact that these tasks differ not only in the type of mental state inference being assessed (cognitive vs. affective), but also in the modality of stimulus presentation (verbal vs. visual).
 
4
We did not administer three items from the original SRQ that form the Sexual Relationships subscale. The omission of these items did not affect our subscales of interest.
 
5
Sadikova, E., Kirby, L. A., Pecukonis, M., Warnell, K., & Redcay, E. (2017, May). Developmental relations between social reward, social cognition, and total severity in ASD. Poster presented at the International Meeting for Autism Research, San Francisco, CA.
 
6
We emphasize the specificity of our measure of emotional contagion within the larger construct of empathy. Whereas another aspect, cognitive empathy/affective ToM, is captured by the RMET and the ToMI (particularly the Early subscale, which includes several items pertaining to emotion recognition and understanding), our study lacks a measure of empathic concern.
 
7
Self-reports are also imperfect measures of emotional contagion in autistic individuals, who are more likely than TD individuals to experience alexithymia—that is, difficulty interpreting and verbalizing one’s own emotional state (Bird & Viding 2014). The study by Trimmer et al. (2017) illustrates this: autistic individuals under-reported their affective responses to distressing videos despite exhibiting typical levels of physiological arousal and facial affect.
 
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Metagegevens
Titel
Explaining Variance in Social Symptoms of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Auteurs
Diana Alkire
Katherine Rice Warnell
Laura Anderson Kirby
Dustin Moraczewski
Elizabeth Redcay
Publicatiedatum
16-07-2020
Uitgeverij
Springer US
Gepubliceerd in
Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders / Uitgave 4/2021
Print ISSN: 0162-3257
Elektronisch ISSN: 1573-3432
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-020-04598-x

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