The Importance of Emotion Regulation Coping Strategies and Emotion Knowledge for Social Competence with Peers in Preschoolers with Autism

Background:

In the preschool years, interactions with peers are often emotionally-charged situations.  Children’s use of effective coping strategies in such situations is critical for maintaining positive exchanges and forming enduring relationships with peers (Eisenberg & Spinrad, 2004).  Several emotional prerequisites have been identified for preschoolers’ social competence with peers (Denham, et al., 2003), including knowledge of others’ emotions (Denham, et al., 1990), emotion regulation (i.e., the ability to modulate emotional experiences or expressions; Calkins & Mackler, 2011), and children’s temperamental negativity and effortful control (Rothbart, Posner, & Hershey, 1995).  There is a need for more work examining how these processes predict social outcomes among children with autism in order to identify the most critical intervention targets for this population.   

Objectives:

In an effort to directly inform peer interventions for children with autism, the first goal of our study was to examine the coping strategies employed by preschoolers with autism in emotional situations with peers.  Our second goal was to understand the relative importance of emotion knowledge, emotion regulation, and temperamental negativity and effortful control for children’s social competence.   

Methods:

Participants were 40 children (Mage = 54.57 months), including 20 children with high functioning autism (HFA) and 20 matched, typical peers with no significant differences in mental age, receptive language, or expressive language. Children’s predominant coping strategies in emotional situations were assessed using the Parent’s Reports of Children’s Reactions (Eisenberg, Fabes, Nyman, Bernzweig, and Pinuelas, 1994).  Emotion knowledge was measured using Denham’s (1986) Affective Knowledge Puppet Task.  Emotion regulation was measured using the Emotion Regulation Checklist (Shields & Cicchetti, 1997).  Temperamental effortful control and negativity were assessed with the Child Behavior Questionnaire-SF (Putnam & Rothbart, 2006).  Finally, parents reported on children’s social competence using the Child Behavior Scale (Ladd & Profilet, 1996) approximately one year later. 

Results:  

With respect to coping strategies in emotional situations with peers, after controlling for mental age, preschoolers with autism used significantly fewer positive coping strategies (i.e., less support seeking, cognitive restructuring, and instrumental coping, and more aggression) than their matched peers, t (37) = 4.62, p <.001.  Diagnostic group differences also emerged in several emotional prerequisites for social competence, even after controlling for receptive language or mental age.  Children with autism showed less knowledge of others’ emotions in equivocal situations t (37) = 2.75, p = .011, impaired emotion regulation t (37) = 3.13, p = .003, less temperamental effortful control t (37) = 6.47, p <.001, but no difference in temperamental negativity (p > .05).  Results of hierarchical multiple regression indicated that, after controlling for mental age, emotion knowledge (p = .046), and emotion regulation (p = .015), emerged as the most significant predictors of children’s social competence with peers, F (5, 39) = 7.357, p < .001, R²= .520.

Conclusions:

Our findings point to the importance of targeting emotion regulation, particularly the use of effective coping strategies, as well as an emphasis on knowledge of others’ emotions, as critical intervention components to improve the peer interactions of preschoolers with autism.