Exploring Relationships Between Cognitive Rigidity, Alexithymia, Emotion Regulation, Intolerance of Uncertainty and Anxiety in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Background:  The increased prevalence of anxiety and autism spectrum disorder is now well documented (eg Simonoff et al 2008) and understanding of the atypical presentation of anxiety is also much advanced (Kerns et al 2014). However the aetiology of increased rates and atypical presentations is less well understood. Promising avenues of investigation include neurocognitive mechanisms such as cognitive rigidity and intolerance of uncertainty, and emotion processing pathways such as alexithymia and emotion regulation.

Objectives:  In this study we investigate the inter-relationship between these variables and the relative impact of each on anxiety in a dataset of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, using the ADI and ADOS, across a range of intellectual disability.

Methods: Questionnaires measuring intolerance of uncertainty, cognitive flexibility and alexithymia were administered to parent and child dyads as well as an emotional regulation questionnaire to parents only. Univariate statistics will be used to investigate significance of proposed predictors for anxiety. For the binary logistic regression, a model for anxiety will be developed using a backward elimination approach and then the performance of the proposed model will be assessed.

Results:  Full results will be presented at IMFAR as we are currently still in the process of collecting data. The dataset will consist of approximately 150 children and parent dyads, with children aged between 6-18, and a gender ratio of approximately 3:1 males to females.

Conclusions:  We propose a comprehensive model for mechanisms underpinning and/or leading to the increased prevalence of and frequently atypical presentation of anxiety and autism spectrum disorder.