A Pilot Study on the Relationship Between Restricted Repetitive Behaviors and Mothers' Stress

Background: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a range of complex neurodevelopment disorders characterized by “social impairments,” “communication difficulties,” and “restricted repetitive behaviors” (RRBs). Because of the severe and pervasive nature of the disorder, parents of children with ASD experience great stress associated with caring for their children. RRBs can occupy most of the waking hours of an individual and interfere with daily family activities (Gordon, 2000). It is obvious that the RRBs of the children with ASD disturb the usual lives of their parents and can lead to parenting stress.

Objectives: We aimed to examine the relation between RRBs and mothers’ stress, and also which kind of RRBs leads to the highest amount of parenting stress.

Methods: The participants comprised 43 mothers of children with ASD (children’s mean age = 11.23 ± 3.5,) and 9 mothers of typically developing children (children’s mean age = 10.33 ± 4.72). Scales: The Repetitive Behavior Scale-Revised (RBS-R) is a recently developed questionnaire that captures the breadth of RRBs in ASD (Bodfish, 2000). RBS-R contains 43 items, which have been conceptually grouped into six subscales: (a) stereotyped behavior; (b) self-injurious behavior; (c) compulsive behavior; (d) ritualistic behavior; (e) sameness behavior; and (f) restricted behavior. Stress Response Scale (SRS): This includes 18 items for evaluating anxiety and stress.

Results: To test for differences of the stress between the groups, a t-test was performed with the SRS score as the dependent variable and the group (ASD/typically developing) as the independent variable. The results showed little significant difference (t(54) = 1.91, p = .062). No correlations were found between the total scores of the RRBs of children with ASD and their mothers’ stress. However, correlations were found in two subscales of RBS-R—ritualistic behavior (r=0.43, p<.01) and restricted behavior(r=0.34, p<.05)—with SRS scores .

Conclusions: There are various kinds of RRBs in the children with ASD. Not all of them affected the mothers’ stress. We found that only ritualistic behavior (performing activities of daily living in a similar manner) and restricted behavior (limited range of focus, interest, or activity) affected the mothers’ stress. This result suggests that these behaviors pose more difficulties in the daily lives and lead to the highest amount of parenting stress. In our future study, we intend to examine parenting stress by using the stress scale specializing in parenting. In addition, we require many more participants.