Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

The Department of Psychology

Document Type

Dissertation

Abstract

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been found to be frequently comorbid with many medical and psychological disorders, one of which is anxiety disorders. Research has shown that, when anxiety is present within ASD, various areas of the child’s functioning may be impacted, such as ASD symptom severity, emotional regulation skills, adaptability, social skills and daily living skills. The current study aimed to investigate this relationship of anxiety and ASD. First, within a sample of children and adolescents with ASD, the magnitude of the correlation between specific ASD symptoms parent-reported anxiety was compared to determine if certain ASD symptoms were more highly correlated with anxiety than others. Then, participants with ASD with and without elevated anxiety were compared with each other and with those who had a diagnosis other than ASD and no diagnosis on overall symptom severity, severity of emotional outbursts, and fours areas of daily functioning; adaptability, functional communication, social skills and activities of daily living. It was hypothesized that anxiety would be more highly correlated with the ASD symptoms of social initiation and motivation as well as repetitive motor movements, sensory oversensitivity and resistance to change, and those with ASD and anxiety would display more severe ASD symptoms, more overall symptom severity, more emotional outbursts and significantly lower functioning scores, when compared to other diagnostic groups. In general, the results did not support most of these hypotheses because parent-reported ASD symptoms were negatively related to parent-reported anxiety, and this was consistent across most ASD symptoms. This finding suggests that diagnostic overshadowing may be occurring, for prior research has shown that parents may have difficulty distinguishing between anxiety and ASD symptoms. Also, it was found that those with ASD and anxiety did not differ from those with ASD alone on most indices of severity, with the exception of showing significantly lower scores in adaptability. This finding suggests that parents view the ASD symptom of “insistence of sameness” as being highly related to anxiety. Limitations and future directions are then discussed.

Date

7-16-2025

Committee Chair

Frick, Paul

DOI

10.31390/gradschool_dissertations.6832

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