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Strong Emotions Cause Social Problems; Or Is This the Other Way Around in Children and Adolescents with ASD?

Friday, May 15, 2015: 5:30 PM-7:00 PM
Imperial Ballroom (Grand America Hotel)
C. Rieffe1,2, J. A. de Ruiter1, C. E. Stevenson3, L. Stockmann4 and M. G. Bos1, (1)Developmental Psychology, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands, (2)Foundation for the deaf and hard of hearing child, Amsterdam, Netherlands, (3)Methodology and Statistics, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands, (4)Centrum Autisme Rivierduinen, Leiden, Netherlands
Background: Many children with ASD report being bullied, but also increasing evidence suggest they participate in bullying themselves. Bullying and victimization in normal development are related to emotion dysregulation, but the causality of this relationship is yet unclear. Although social impairments are part of the diagnosis ASD, it would be important to examine the extent to which bullying and/or victimization are also related to emotion dysregulation in children and adolescents with ASD, and what the causal direction of this relationship is.

Objectives: In a short-term longitudinal study, we examined the contribution of emotion dysregulation to the prediction of bullying and victimization problems in boys with ASD and an age matched control group.  

Methods: Eighty-nine boys (ASD: n=50; TD: n=39) and their parents were asked to fill out questionnaires regarding emotion dysregulation on baseline and self-reported frequencies of bullying behaviors and victimization problems at an 18 months follow-up. The mean age of the boys was 12 years old during the first data collection (age range: 9 – 15 years). Correlation and hierarchical regression analyses were performed to examine the predictive relation between emotion dysfunction at baseline and bullying problems at follow-up; and vice versa.

Results: To date only the cross-sectional data has been analysed. These outcomes showed that more anger is related to more bullying behaviors in both groups, children with ASD and controls; but whereas victimization is related to more feelings of fear in the control group, the dominant emotion related to victimization for the ASD group is anger.

Conclusions: The longitudinal outcomes will shed light on different hypotheses that can be formulated based on these cross-sectional outcomes. The main cross-sectional finding that needs explanation is the strong relationship between anger and victimization in children with ASD. Possibly, children with ASD are more easily angered and make a good victim for bullies; alternatively, children with ASD might use anger as a defence strategy for anticipated bullying.

See more of: Social Cognition and Social Behavior
See more of: Social Cognition and Social Behavior