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Do Kids with Autism Get “the Feels”?; Making Sense of Interoception
Professionals suspect that children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have differences with their interoceptive system, defined as the sensory system that allows us to experience internal physiological sensations. Awareness of these interoceptive sensations is what underlies our ability to clearly interpret our emotions such as anger, anxiety, calm and distractibility.
Objectives:
The purpose of our study was to compare how parents of teens with and without high functioning autism interpret their child’s levels of interoceptive awareness.
Methods:
Our study consisted of a 55 item Likert Scale survey administered to parents of teens with and without high functioning autism, and the responses were compared. For the purpose of this poster, we calculated average composite scores for eleven questions that targeted general emotional awareness (general emotional composite, GEC), three that targeted the perception of anger (anger composite, AC) and three that targeted the perception of calm (calm composite, CC). Lower scores indicate less interoceptive awareness. A two-sampled t-test was used to compare averages between ASD and controls and Cohen’s d was used to determine effect size.
Results:
The ASD group consisted of 81 parents of teens. The average age of the teens in the ASD group was 13.65 years and 75% were boys. The control group consisted of 96 parents of teens. The average age of the teens in the control group was 12.91 years and 50% were boys. The ASD group had a significantly lower GEC than the control group (1.80 vs. 2.58, p<0.001, Cohen’s d 2.19). The ASD group also had a significantly lower AC than the control group (1.82 vs. 2.48, p<0.001, Cohen’s d 1.46) and lower CC than the control group (2.07 vs. 2.57, p<0.001, Cohen’s d 1.05).
Conclusions:
Our study was the first to survey interoceptive awareness in teenagers with and without high functioning autism. Our results suggest that when compared to neurotypical controls, the parents of high functioning autistic teens interpret their children as less aware of their interoceptive sensations leading to reduced emotional awareness.