Parental Scaffolding of Emotion Understanding in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders: Relations to Emotion Regulation Abilities

Background: While tantrums, “meltdowns,” and other behavior problems have been studied extensively among children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD; e.g., Bauminger, Solomon, & Rogers, 2010; Mayes, et al., 2012), the underlying emotional dysregulation that often spurs these behavioral symptoms is not well understood. Furthermore, emotion dysregulation is closely related to social difficulties for typically developing children (e.g., Blandon, Calkins, & Keane, 2010; Eisenberg et al., 1993). However, factors that may contribute to improved emotion regulation abilities throughout development (e.g., emotional understanding; parent-child discussions about emotions) remain understudied within this population.

Objectives: Specific research questions addressed in this paper are: 1) how do parents attempt to scaffold children’s understanding of emotions? 2) how do children respond to parental emotion scaffolding? and 3) to what extent does parental scaffolding of emotional understanding influence the development of children’s emotion regulation abilities at a later time-point?

Methods: The current study examines emotion dysregulation in 4- to 7-year-old children with ASD (current N=111) using data obtained from a multi-site longitudinal study; this study utilizes data from two time-points, 9 months apart. Children’s diagnoses were confirmed using the ADOS and all children exhibited an IQ ≥ 55. Parental scaffolding of emotional understanding was observed and coded during a parent-child interaction task, along with children’s emotion-related comments during this task. This 8-minute interaction task consisted of parents and children reading wordless picture books in a set order. Emotion dysregulation (e.g., mood swings, difficulty recovering once upset, proneness to frustration and disruptive outbursts) was measured using parent-report on the Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC; Shields & Cicchetti, 1995) and children’s behavioral and emotional dysregulation was assessed using parent-report on the Dysregulation Profile of the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL-DP; Achenbach & Rescorla, 2000, 2001; Althoff et al., 2010).

Results: Analyses with the first set of coded subjects (n=23) showed that parents exhibit a wide range of emotion-based comments while reading wordless picture books with their children (mean frequency = 18.96; range = 2 to 36). Children whose parents commented on emotions more frequently also exhibited significantly more emotion-related comments during the task (r=.46, p<.05). When looking at the quality of the scaffolding, parental use of high-level scaffolding (e.g., asking the child to identify clues to emotions or connecting the child’s understanding to real-life experiences) was related to children’s elaborations about emotions beyond a simple response (r=.53, p=.009), while lower-level scaffolding (e.g., labeling emotions, asking direct questions about emotions) was not. The coding process will continue through the remainder of the sample of 111 and additional analyses will explore the extent to which parental scaffolding and children’s emotional understanding relate to children’s emotion dysregulation and regulation abilities at an assessment conducted nine months later.

Conclusions: Emotion dysregulation is a key variable to consider in understanding the functioning of children with ASD. Examining ways in which parents scaffold children’s emotional understanding may help explain variability in children’s emotion regulation abilities and inform interventions to alleviate social and behavioral impairments for this population.