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Parenting Stress and Child Behavior Problems in Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Transactional Relations Across Time

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Abstract

This longitudinal study examined the transactional relations between parenting stress and both internalizing and externalizing behavioral problems in young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) over 1.5 years using a cross-lagged panel analysis. Participants included 75 young children with ASD (Time 1; mean age = 25.68 months) and their parents. Parenting stress that was related to parent’s perceptions on child characteristics was found to predict externalizing behavioral problems in young children with ASD across two time points. However, behavioral problems in young children with ASD did not predict parenting stress. These findings provide implications for early intervention and family services for young children with ASD and their families.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the parents and children who generously donated their time to this project.

Funding

This study was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST-103-2628-H-037-001-MY2, MOST-105-2410-H-037-001-MY3).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Kaohsiung Medical University, 8F, Chi-Shih Building, 100, Shih-Chuan 1st Road, Kaohsiung, 80708, Taiwan

    Yun-Nung Lin & Chin-Chin Wu

  2. Department of Psychology, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

    Lai-Sang Iao

  3. Clinical Psychology Center, Ditmanson Medical Foundation, Chia-Yi Christian Hospital, Chiayi, Taiwan

    Yu-Han Lee

  4. Department of Medical Research, Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

    Chin-Chin Wu

Authors
  1. Yun-Nung Lin
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  2. Lai-Sang Iao
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  4. Chin-Chin Wu
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Contributions

YNL and CCW conceived of the presented idea and contributed to analysis and interpretation of data. YNL and CCW also wrote the manuscript with support from LSI. Data collection were performed by YNL, YHL, and CCW. All authors discussed the results and contributed to the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Chin-Chin Wu.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This study was approved by the Ditmanson Medical Foundation Chia-Yi Christian Hospital Research Ethics Committee (CYCH-IRB102045).

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in this study.

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Lin, YN., Iao, LS., Lee, YH. et al. Parenting Stress and Child Behavior Problems in Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Transactional Relations Across Time. J Autism Dev Disord 51, 2381–2391 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-020-04720-z

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