Personality Traits Mediate the Relationship between SRS-2 and BASC Composites in Children with HFASD

Background: Meta-analytic findings indicate that lower levels of Big Five personality traits are associated with ASD and ASD characteristics (Lodi-Smith et al., in press). These traits are related to both internalizing and externalizing behaviors in children with ASD (De Pauw et al., 2011; Schriber et al., 2014) and mediate the relationship between ASD characteristics and positive outcomes in a community sample (Rodgers et al., 2018). These studies suggest that higher Big Five personality traits may be adaptive in ASD, just as they are in individuals with non-ASD diagnoses and the general population.

Objectives: The current analyses replicate and extend this work by testing the relationship among Big Five personality traits, ASD symptoms, and behavioral outcomes with the hypothesis that Big Five personality traits will mediate the relationship between ASD symptoms and behavioral outcomes.

Methods: The relationship among personality traits, ASD symptoms, and behavioral outcomes is tested in 46 children with high-functioning ASD recruited for a larger intervention studies targeted at training social skills (see, Lopata et al., 2012; Thomeer et al., 2012 for inclusion criteria and screening procedures). At intake, parents and children reported on child Big Five personality traits using the Big Five Inventory-2 (BFI-2; Soto & John, 2017). Parents also completed the Social Responsiveness Scale – Second Edition (SRS-2; Constantino & Gruber, 2012) and the Behavior Assessment System for Children (BASC-2, Reynolds & Kamphaus, 2004; BASC-3, Reynolds & Kamphaus, 2015). Children were an average of 9.14 years (SD = 1.82, range = 6 – 12), were primarily male (n = 46, 95.8%), and White and not of Hispanic or Latino descent (n = 40, 83.3%). All analyses were conducted in R and SPSS.

Results: Parent reports of child conscientiousness, agreeableness, emotional stability, and extraversion were negatively associated with SRS-2 total scores, social communication scores, and restricted and repetitive behavior scores as well as BASC scores of internalizing and externalizing problems, and behavioral symptoms. Parent reports on each of these traits were also positively correlated with BASC adaptive skills. The only significant correlations for child reports were negative correlations between emotional stability and BASC externalizing problems and behavioral symptoms. Neither parent or child reports of openness to experience were significantly correlated with SRS-2 or BASC scores. Multiple mediation analyses indicate that parent reports of conscientiousness, agreeableness, and emotional stability mediate the relationship between SRS-2 and BASC scores.

Conclusions: Effects for parent reports replicate meta-analytic findings on the relationship of personality traits to ASD and extend this work to the domain of ASD symptoms. Further, these results replicate prior work suggesting that higher levels of certain personality traits may be a buffer against behavioral challenges within ASD and in children with non-ASD mental health diagnoses. Paired with the robust evidence that personality traits can and do change across the lifespan and are predictive of positive outcomes across multiple domains in clinical and non-clinical populations, these findings add to the growing body of literature that suggests personality traits may be a productive potential target for future interventions in this population.