Two Stanford psychologists have found that the emotional difficulties faced by many individuals with autism come from a lack of effective emotion regulation strategies. In an ongoing collaboration with the Stanford Autism Center, the researchers are now planning to help people with autism learn to cope better.
The diagnostic manual of the American Psychiatric Association defines autism in what seems to be a fairly comprehensive way: social impairment, difficulties with communication, repetitive behavior and restricted interests – the so-called “core symptoms” of the autism spectrum disorders.
But autism is a complex condition, and even a description as official and thorough as this one may leave out something important.
“If you talk to parents of children with autism, they’ll say all these characteristics are important,” said Stanford psychology Professor James Gross. “But what’s not featured in the diagnostic manual is the extreme difficulty many kids with autism have with emotion.”
From a caretaker’s perspective, sudden emotional outbursts can be one of the single most disruptive aspects of the disease. Still, emotion regulation in autism has attracted relatively little research.
In a survey of adults with high-functioning autism or Asperger’s syndrome, Gross, psychology postdoctoral scholar Andrea Samson and University of Fribourg psychology Professor Oswald Huber found that individuals with the disorder consistently reported using less effective emotion regulation strategies than typically developing individuals.
Now, in an ongoing collaboration with Stanford School of Medicine psychiatry Associate Professor Antonio Hardan, Samson and Gross have begun to take a closer look at emotional development among children and youths with autism – and how this knowledge might lead to new treatments for the condition. [continue reading…]