Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Individuals with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) experience significant difficulties in social interaction and communication, as well as behavioural and/or emotional problems. Approximately 71% to 86% of children with ASD have at least one behavioural (e.g., hyperactivity, aggression) or emotional problem (e.g., anxiety, depression). Previous research found that the majority of children with ASD experience four or more of these problems at least three times a week, and anxiety is a common problem in youth with ASD. These behavioural and emotional problems may be related to difficulties controlling emotions, also known as emotion regulation. Emotion regulation strategies can vary in effectiveness. When put in frustrating situations, children with ASD tend to use less effective emotion regulation strategies (e.g., crying or stomping their feet) than children who do not have ASD, who are more likely to use more effective strategies (e.g., accepting the situation and finding alternatives). Children with ASD who use more effective strategies are less likely to have emotion problems, like anxiety, and behavioural problems, like throwing temper tantrums. In general, children tend to have better control over their emotions and fewer behavioural and emotional problems if their parents are able to help them cope, although this has yet to be examined in children with ASD. The purpose of this study is to see if parental emotion coaching, which involves parents modeling how to stay calm and manage stressful situations, is related to better emotion regulation and less behavioural and emotional problems in children who have ASD. As part of a larger study run by Dr. Jonathan Weiss and his research team, the current study will look at 40 children with ASD from 8 to 12 years of age. We will use three different ways to collect data. First, we will observe parents and children when they work on a frustrating task (assembling a Lego model with two pieces missing) to see how parents help their children deal with their emotions, and how children are controlling their emotions. Second, we will take measurements of the children’s and parent’s levels of arousal by measuring changes in their skin, which will give us a biological indication of how parents and children stay calm during this task. Lastly, parents and children will complete surveys that rate how well children regulate their emotions and how often children are showing behavioural and/or emotional problems. We expect that parent emotional coaching (as measured by their responses in the frustration task and their skin response) will be related to more successful child emotion regulation and less emotional and behavioural problems (as measured by their skin responses and behaviours during the task, and survey reports about outside of the task). This study may help clinicians and other health service providers when giving advice to parents of children with ASD who are dealing with issues like anxiety or aggression. It may also lead to more therapies focusing on teaching parents how to guide their children when dealing with emotions.