Links Between ASD and Self-Regulation Abilities on Adaptive Functioning Skills

Background:
Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often exhibit marked difficulties in adaptive skills (Kanne et al., 2011) compared to peers with typical development (TD) (Williams, Mazefsky, Walker, Mineshew, & Goldstein, 2014).  Research suggests poor self-regulation skills may interfere with children’s adaptive skills (Buckner, Mezzacappa, & Beardslee, 2009).  The delay of gratification (DoG) task, a measure of children’s ability to postpone an immediate reward in favor of a more favorable, delayed reward, requires good self-regulation skills (Brock, Rimm-Kaufman, & Wanless, 2014).  Research suggests self-regulation difficulties are more prevalent in children with ASD than children with TD (Jahromi, Bryce, & Swanson, 2013).  Although children with ASD have pronounced adaptive function and self-regulation difficulties, there is a gap in the literature regarding the potential relations among children’s developmental status (ASD vs. TD), performance on a DoG task, and adaptive skills.

Objectives:
The purpose of this study was to test our hypothesis that time waited on a self-regulation task would moderate the relation between children’s status and adaptive skills.

Methods:
Participants included 75 children, ages 3:0 to 6:11, and their parents.  Thirty-five children had an ASD diagnosis and the remaining 40 were typically developing.  Children completed a seven-minute DoG task in a laboratory setting, which was videotaped for subsequent coding.  Seconds children waited on the DoG task was the moderator variable of interest.  Additionally, parents’ ratings from The Behavioral Assessment System for Children – Second Edition (BASC-2; Reynolds & Kamphaus, 2004) were used to evaluate children’s adaptive functioning skills.   

Results:
To test whether wait time on the DoG task moderated the relation between developmental status and adaptive functioning skills, a hierarchical multiple regression analysis was conducted after controlling for children’s verbal skills, age and sex.  Developmental status and DoG wait time in seconds, entered on the second step, accounted for significant unique variance in children’s adaptability skills, ΔR²  = .165, F(2, 70) = 8.87 p < .001.  The interaction term between developmental status and DoG wait time, entered on the third step, accounted for significant additional variance in children’s adaptive skills, ΔR² = .099, ΔF(1, 69) = 12.43, p  = .001.  As shown in Figure 1, children with ASD had adaptive skills at least one SD below the mean whereas children with TD had skills at or above the mean.  As can be seen, the adaptive skills of children with ASD were stronger when they had longer wait times rather than shorter wait times.  Conversely, adaptive skills of children with TD decreased when they had longer wait times, although these children’s skills were all within the average range.

Conclusions:
These findings support our hypothesis that stronger self-regulation skills, as estimated by longer wait times on the DoG, would be associated with better adaptive functioning for children with ASD.  For children with TD who already had average or better adaptive functioning, self-regulation did not appear to play a role in their adaptive functioning.  These findings suggest interventions targeting self-regulation abilities may also be related to improvements in adaptive skills for children with ASD.