Emotion regulation and social responsiveness in adults with autism spectrum disorder

OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to find out the relationship between emotion regulation (ER) and its domains with social responsiveness (SR) to investigate ER and its domains as predictors of SR. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A sample of 60 male and female adults diagnosed by a professional with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) was studied with ER and its domains of RI or Cognitive Reappraisal, SI or Expressive Suppression and SR as variables. Tools used were Social Responsiveness Scale-2 (Adult, Relative/Other online form) and Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ). RESULTS: ERQ domain of Cognitive Reappraisal or RI was found to be negatively correlated with Social Responsiveness or SR but positively correlated with Expressive Suppression or SI domain with Pearson’s r value of −0.662 for RI and of 0.275 for SI. Furthermore, RI and SI variables were found to be significantly negatively correlated with each other. Multiple regression analysis results showed R to be 0.666 and predictor variables explained 44.4% of the variance in the data since R square was found to be 0.444. The model was found to be a significant predictor of the variable SR, F (2, 57) = 22.76, P = 0.000. CONCLUSION: The present study found that ASD adults with high or good SR engage in less cognitive reappraisal (RI) ER strategy and more in expressive suppression (SI) strategy of ER. Multiple regression analysis results suggest a good and strong relationship suggesting our model is a relatively good predictor of the outcome.