Child Autism Spectrum Disorder Traits and Parenting Stress: The Utility of Using a Physiological Measure of Parental Stress

• Published in: Journal of autism and developmental disorders Vol. 48; no. 4; pp. 1081 - 1091
• Main Authors: Factor, Reina S., Swain, Deanna M., Scarpa, Angela
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.04.2018; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Adaptation, Psychological; Adult; Analysis; Autism; Autism Spectrum Disorder - physiopathology; Autism Spectrum Disorder - psychology; Autistic children; Behavioral Science and Psychology; Brain; Caregiver burden; Caregivers; Child; Child and School Psychology; Child, Preschool; Children; Comparative Analysis; Coping; Correlation; Female; Heart Rate; Humans; Male; Maternal stress; Measurement Techniques; Mother-child relations; Mothers; Neurosciences; Parent Attitudes; Parent Child Relationship; Parent-child relations; Parental stress; Parenting - psychology; Parents & parenting; Parents - psychology; Pediatrics; Pervasive Developmental Disorders; Physiology; Psychological research; Psychology; Public Health; S.I. : Parenting Children with ASD; Scores; Self report; Self Report - standards; Stress; Stress (Psychology); Stress Variables; Stress, Psychological - physiopathology; Stress, Psychological - psychology; Symptoms (Individual Disorders); Task Analysis; Variability; United States; Parenting; Heart rate variability; Autism spectrum disorder; Stress reactivity
• ISSN: 0162-3257; 1573-3432
• DOI: 10.1007/s10803-017-3397-5

Caregivers of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) report greater stress due to unique parenting demands (e.g.; Estes et al. in Brain Dev 35(2):133–138, 2013). Stress is often studied through self-report and has not been extensively studied using physiological measures. This study compared parenting stress in mothers of children with and without ASD traits. Twenty-seven mother–child dyads participated in an interaction task while measuring mother’s heart rate variability (HRV) and mothers self-reported stress levels. Results demonstrated that while self-report and physiological stress measures were not correlated, ASD symptomology did account for HRV change score (i.e., more severe ASD symptoms were positively related to HRV change). This may reflect an atypical coping response. Implications for using physiological indicators for studying parenting stress are explored.