Measuring Emotion Regulation in Children with Autism: A Novel Observational Tool

Background: Children with autism often experience difficulty regulating their emotions, and these difficulties have been associated with a range of emotional and behavioural problems (Mazefsky et al., 2013). While there are a number of self and parent-report questionnaires of emotion regulation (ER), few observational measures exist. To address this gap, we created an observational measure of child ER, adapted from a parent-report measure, the Emotion Regulation Checklist (Shields & Cicchetti, 1997). This adapted measure was used to assess child ER processes during a standardized 15-minute Emotion Discussion Task (EDT; Suveg, 2008), around situation(s) where the child felt anxious, angry and happy.

Objectives: 1) Examine the reliability and concurrent validity of an observational measure of ER; 2) investigate associations between an observational measure of child ER and parent co-regulation strategies, assessed during the same task; and 3) examine associations between an observational measure of child ER and child internalizing and externalizing problems.

Methods: Preliminary findings are based on 49 children with ASD (aged 8-12 years), however final results will be based on a total of 62 children. To examine the concurrent validity of our observational measure of ER, we correlated scores with scores on standardized, parent and self-report measures of ER. To examine associations between our observational measure and parent co-regulation strategies, we used a behavioural coding scheme (Gulsrud et al., 2010) to assess parent scaffolding and parent co-regulation strategies, during the same EDT task. Finally, to examine associations between our observational measure of child ER and child emotional and behaviour problems, we correlated scores on our observational ER measure with a standardized measure of internalizing and externalizing problems.

Results: Preliminary findings suggest that our observational ER measure has excellent reliability for both subscales: lability/negativity (ICC = .94) and emotion regulation (ICC = .88). The observational lability/negativity subscale score was associated with parent ratings of emotion lability/negativity (r_s = .31, p = .03), emotion regulation (r_s = -.40, p = .01), and behavioural symptoms (r_s = .31, p = .03). The observational emotion regulation subscale score was associated with parent global scaffolding ratings (emotional: r_s = .33, p = .02; motivational: r_s = .38, p = .02), suggesting that parents who provided higher quality scaffolding during the EDT had children who displayed higher levels of emotion regulation during that interaction. The observational emotion regulation subscale was also associated with child self-reported emotion management (dysregulation: r_s = -.35, p = .02; coping: r_s = .38, p = .01), and parent ratings of child emotion regulation (r_s = .32, p = .03). Finally, internalizing (r_s = -.32, p = .03) and externalizing (r_s = -.44, p = .001) symptoms were also related to our observational emotion regulation subscale, indicating that parents reported greater internalizing and externalizing problems among children observed to display more difficulty with emotion regulation.

Conclusions: Preliminary results support the concurrent validity of an observational measure of ER among children with ASD. Findings also highlight the importance of a multidimensional approach to assessing emotion regulation.