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Psychophysiological Arousal to Social Stress in Autism Spectrum Disorders

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Comprehensive Guide to Autism

Abstract

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) have social deficits which can lead to academic, occupational, and psychiatric difficulties. These individuals face multiple social challenges during the course of their lives which are exacerbated by difficulties understanding, processing, and describing social and emotional content in themselves and others. Self-report of such experiences is challenging for many individuals with ASD. As a result, there has been increasing interest in observing responses to social and nonsocial experiences across multiple levels of analysis, including measurement of psychophysiological systems related to homeostatic regulation. The study of psychophysiological arousal patterns in children and adults with ASDs during social stress provides information about the nature of, and individual differences in, emotional reactivity that is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve via self-report. However, psychophysiological markers of social stress in children and adults with ASDs (including sympathetic, parasympathetic, and hormonal) have yielded inconsistent results. In this chapter, we attempt to disentangle why these inconsistencies have emerged, within the context of the complex relations between these markers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Brown Center for the Study of Children at Risk, Women and Infants’ Hospital of Rhode Island, 101 Dudley Street, Providence, RI, 02905, USA

    Todd P. Levine

  2. Departments of Psychiatry and Human Behavior and Pediatrics, Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Brown Center for the Study of Children at Risk, 101 Dudley Street, Providence, RI, 02905, USA

    Elisabeth Conradt, Stephen J. Sheinkopf & Barry Lester

  3. Department of Health Sciences, Northeastern University, Bouvé; College of Health Science & College of Computer and Information Science, 312E Robinson Hall, 360 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA, 02115, USA

    Matthew S. Goodwin

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  1. Todd P. Levine
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  2. Elisabeth Conradt
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  3. Matthew S. Goodwin
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  4. Stephen J. Sheinkopf
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  5. Barry Lester
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Correspondence to Todd P. Levine .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Westminster, Faculty of Science & Technology, London, United Kingdom

    Vinood B. Patel

  2. Nutritional Sciences Division and Genomics Centre, King's College London, London, United Kingdom

    Victor R. Preedy

  3. Faculty of Society and Health, Buckinghamshire New University, Middlesex, United Kingdom

    Colin R. Martin

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Levine, T.P., Conradt, E., Goodwin, M.S., Sheinkopf, S.J., Lester, B. (2014). Psychophysiological Arousal to Social Stress in Autism Spectrum Disorders. In: Patel, V., Preedy, V., Martin, C. (eds) Comprehensive Guide to Autism. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4788-7_66

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4788-7_66

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-4787-0

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