20266
Strong Emotions Cause Social Problems; Or Is This the Other Way Around in Children and Adolescents with ASD?
Objectives: In a short-term longitudinal study, we examined the contribution of emotion dysregulation to the prediction of bullying and victimization problems in boys with ASD and an age matched control group.
Methods: Eighty-nine boys (ASD: n=50; TD: n=39) and their parents were asked to fill out questionnaires regarding emotion dysregulation on baseline and self-reported frequencies of bullying behaviors and victimization problems at an 18 months follow-up. The mean age of the boys was 12 years old during the first data collection (age range: 9 – 15 years). Correlation and hierarchical regression analyses were performed to examine the predictive relation between emotion dysfunction at baseline and bullying problems at follow-up; and vice versa.
Results: To date only the cross-sectional data has been analysed. These outcomes showed that more anger is related to more bullying behaviors in both groups, children with ASD and controls; but whereas victimization is related to more feelings of fear in the control group, the dominant emotion related to victimization for the ASD group is anger.
Conclusions: The longitudinal outcomes will shed light on different hypotheses that can be formulated based on these cross-sectional outcomes. The main cross-sectional finding that needs explanation is the strong relationship between anger and victimization in children with ASD. Possibly, children with ASD are more easily angered and make a good victim for bullies; alternatively, children with ASD might use anger as a defence strategy for anticipated bullying.