Emotion Regulation and Executive Function: Associations with Depression and Anxiety in Autism.

Publisher: Elsevier Country of Publication: Netherlands NLM ID: 101300021 Publication Model: Print-Electronic Cited Medium: Print ISSN: 1750-9467 (Print) NLM ISO Abbreviation: Res Autism Spectr Disord Subsets: PubMed not MEDLINE

Original Publication: Amsterdam : Elsevier

Background: Adolescents and young adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are prone to experience co-occurring mental health conditions such as mood or anxiety disorders, as well as impairments in emotion regulation and executive functioning. However, little research has examined inter-relationships among these constructs, despite evidence of additional stressors and increased risk of internalizing disorders at this age, relative to non-autistic individuals. If either emotion regulation or executive functioning are shown to have patterns of association with mental health, this can inform mechanism-based intervention.
Method: Fifty-seven autistic adolescents and adults (16-25 years) with ASD in a transition intervention completed questionnaires and clinician-administered measures at baseline. Analyses assessed whether executive functioning impairment, above and beyond emotion regulation impairment, were associated with depression and anxiety symptoms.
Results: ASD characteristics, emotion regulation, anxiety, and depression were significantly correlated. ASD characteristics was a significant contributor to depression and emotion regulation impairments were significant contributors to anxiety and depression. Findings indicated that inhibition difficulties did not uniquely contribute to depression or anxiety above emotion regulation impairment. Difficulties in cognitive flexibility were associated with depression above and beyond ASD characteristics, IQ, and emotion regulation, but not associated with anxiety.
Conclusions: Although preliminary, findings suggest that inflexibility and regulatory impairment should be considered in depression remediation approaches. Improving ER, on the other hand, may have broader transdiagnostic impact across both mood and anxiety symptoms in ASD.
Competing Interests: Conflict of Interest The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare that are relevant to the content of this article. Declaration of interests The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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R01 MH114906 United States MH NIMH NIH HHS; R34 MH104337 United States MH NIMH NIH HHS

Keywords: anxiety; cognitive flexibility; depression; emotion regulation; executive functioning; inhibition

Date Created: 20230206 Latest Revision: 20240302

20240302

PMC9897310

10.1016/j.rasd.2023.102103

36741741