Parent Emotion Socialization in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Co-Occurring Anxiety
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Parent Emotion Socialization in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Co‑Occurring Anxiety Rebecca Jordan1 · Carla B. Kalvin1 · Karim Ibrahim1 · Denis G. Sukhodolsky1 Accepted: 28 October 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Although parents’ socialization of children’s emotional experiences and expression has been widely studied in typically developing (TD) populations, these processes have been largely unexplored in families of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The present study examined parent emotion socialization in a well‐characterized sample of verbally fluent children with ASD and comorbid anxiety disorders. Participants included 64 children, aged 8–15 years, who had ASD and co-occurring anxiety and 24 matched TD children without psychiatric disorders. Parents completed ratings of their responses to their children’s emotional experiences using the Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale (CCNES), and both parents and children completed ratings of child anxiety using the Multidimensional Anxiety Rating Scale (MASC). Parents of children with ASD and anxiety did not differ from parents of TD children without psychiatric disorders in their endorsement of different emotion socialization practices. However, among children with ASD and anxiety, greater anxiety was associated with more emotion-focused responses from parents, and for children with less ASD symptom severity, lower levels of anxiety were associated with more punitive responses from parents. Results suggest that certain types of more directive emotion socialization approaches may be associated with lower anxiety in children with ASD, whereas emotion socialization approaches focused on altering the child’s emotional experiences may be associated with greater anxiety in this population. While it is likely that parent emotion socialization practices impact children’s emotional experiences of anxiety, it is also likely that children with distinct profiles of anxiety and ASD symptomology elicit specific styles of emotion socialization from parents. During childhood, parents play a critical role in shaping their children’s understanding, experience, and expression of emotions (Eisenberg et al. 1998). For children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who commonly experience difficulty with emotional understanding and demonstrate marked difficulties with emotion regulation (Mazefsky et al. 2014), parent coaching of their children’s emotional experiences is a particularly relevant process. However, shockingly little is understood about parent socialization of emotions in this population. In contrast, the effects of parent emotion socialization in typically developing (TD) children have been well studied (Malatesta and Haviland 1982; Gottman et al. 1997; Eisenberg et al. 1998). Given the high prevalence of * Rebecca Jordan [email protected] Denis G. Sukhodolsky [email protected] 1
Child Study Center, Yale University School of Medicine, 230 S. Frontage Road, New Haven, CT 0652
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