Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Uljarević, Mirko
• Richdale, Amanda L
• Evans, David W
• Cai, Ru Ying
• Leekam, Susan R

Titel

Interrelationship between insistence on sameness, effortful control and anxiety in adolescents and young adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD)

Ist Teil von

• Molecular autism, 2017-07, Vol.8 (1), p.36-36, Article 36

Ort / Verlag

England: BioMed Central Ltd

Erscheinungsjahr

2017

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

SpringerLink (Online service)

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Both self-regulation and insistence on sameness (IS) are related to anxiety, which is a common feature of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Here, we aimed to characterise the IS-self-regulation-anxiety interrelationship by investigating the potential contribution made by self-regulation, assessed via effortful control (EC), to the IS-anxiety relationship in a sample of adolescents and young adults with ASD. Seventy-one older adolescents and younger adults with ASD (49 males, 22 females;  = 18.71 years, SD = 2.51, range 14.42-24.81) completed the Adult Repetitive Behaviour Questionnaire-2, Effortful Control Scale of the Adult Temperament Questionnaire and the DSM-5 Dimensional Anxiety Scales. IS was associated with both EC (  = -.39,  = .001) and anxiety (  = .45,  < .001), and anxiety was in turn associated with EC (  = -.44,  < .001). To characterise the nature of this interrelationship, two mediation analyses were performed using the serial mediation model in PROCESS with 5000 resamples in bootstrapping. There was a significant indirect effect of EC on anxiety, through IS (  = -.06; BCa 95% CI [-.13, -.02]), and indirect effect on anxiety through EC (  = 1.62; BCa 95% CI [.59, 3.24]) with the mediators accounting for 29.07 and 26.04% of the total effect, respectively. Our study provides the first exploration of the IS-anxiety-self-regulation link in ASD. The finding that lower levels of self-regulation are related both to anxiety and IS behaviours points to self-regulation as a viable intervention target for both anxiety and IS behaviours.