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Linking the Emotional Self-Control of Children with ASD to ADHD Symptomology: A Moderated Mediation Analysis
Objectives: We hypothesized that children with ASD would exhibit higher rates of externalizing behaviors than TD children and that this relation would be mediated by their emotional self-control. Furthermore, we hypothesized that the link between status and emotional self-control would be conditional on children’s levels of ADHD symptomatology.
Methods: Participants included 88 children, ages 3:0 to 6:11, their parents, and teachers. Fifty-seven children (28% female) were TD and the remaining 31 were diagnosed with ASD (6% female). The Behavioral Assessment System for Children – Second Edition Teacher Rating Scale (BASC-2; Reynolds & Kamphaus, 2004) was used to assess children’s emotional self-control and children’s externalizing behaviors as reported by their parents. The ADHD Index from the Conner’s Parent Rating Scale (CPRS-R-S; Conners, 1997) was used to assess ADHD symptoms.
Results: We investigated the conditional indirect effects of status on externalizing behaviors through emotional self-control, as moderated by ADHD symptoms (see Figure 1). We tested this moderated-mediation model using Model 7 in PROCESS (Hayes, 2013). The overall model was significant. Although status was a significant predictor of children’s externalizing behaviors (B = -4.45, SE = 1.13, t = -3.94, p < .001), the relation between status and externalizing behaviors was mediated by children’s emotional self-control but only at mean (B = -3.99, SE = 1.20, t = -3.33, p = .001) and high levels (B = -8.01, SE = 1.71, t = -4.69, p < .001) of the moderator, ADHD symptoms, and not at low levels (B = -1.76, SE = 1.87, t = -.95, p = .35).
Conclusions: Our findings help to clarify relations among diagnostic status, ADHD symptoms, emotional self-control, and externalizing behaviors in young children with and without ASD. Most notably, children with higher levels of ADHD symptomatology required effective emotional self-control in order to buffer them from externalizing behaviors. This pattern was most pronounced for TD children. Further research should examine the role of emotional self-control in treatment for children with and without ASD who exhibit ADHD symptoms.