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Self-Regulation and Academic Learning in Preschoolers with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Links to School Engagement and Levels of Autism Characteristics

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Abstract

Children with autism spectrum disorder often demonstrate self-regulation challenges and academic difficulties. Although self-regulation has been well documented as an important factor for academic achievement in neurotypical children, little is known about how it is related to academic learning in autistic children, especially during preschool, a critical developmental period for both emergent academic skills and self-regulatory abilities. It is also unclear whether school engagement or autism characteristics influence the relation between self-regulation and academic learning in autistic children during preschool. Thirty-two autistic preschoolers participated in this study. Direct measures and parent reports were used to measure three dimensions of self-regulation, including executive function, effortful control, and emotion regulation. Classroom-based data from multiple academic programs were used to reflect their average rates of achieving new literacy and mathematics learning goals. Teachers reported the participants’ levels of school engagement, and their autism characteristics were measured directly. Emotion regulation was significantly linked to the rate of meeting literacy learning goals in autistic preschoolers, whereas multiple executive function skills, including inhibitory and attentional control and working memory, were associated with their mathematics learning rate. Emotion regulation demonstrated a stronger association with literacy learning when autistic children were more engaged in classroom activities. Levels of autism characteristics did not mediate or moderate the association between self-regulation and academic learning. Future interventions and teaching should consider fostering self-regulation and facilitating school engagement for autistic preschoolers besides targeting their learning performance on specific academic content to promote their current and future academic success.

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Notes

  1. Given that the autism community shares their preferences for both identity-first and person-first language, this manuscript will use both terms interchangeably (Bottema-Beutel et al., 2021; Kenny et al., 2016).

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank all the families who participated in this study, teachers and staff at the Fred S. Keller Schools in Yonkers, New York, and Rockland, New York, for their contributions to the study, and Dr. R Douglas Greer, Dr. Daniel Fienup, Dr. Jessica Dudek, Dr. Stephen Peverly, and Dr. Ye Wang from Teachers College, Columbia University for their valuable feedback to the study.

Funding

The work was supported by the Provost Doctoral Dissertation Grant awarded to Dr. Yanru Chen from Teachers College, Columbia University.

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  1. Yanru Chen

    Present address: Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA

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  1. Department of Health Studies and Applied Educational Psychology, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY, 10027, USA

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YC conceived the study, collected the data, performed statistical analyses, interpreted the data, and wrote the manuscript. LJ contributed to the study conception and revised the manuscript critically. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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All procedures performed in the current study 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 Institutional Review Board at Teachers College, Columbia University (No. 18–407).

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Chen, Y., Jahromi, L.B. Self-Regulation and Academic Learning in Preschoolers with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Links to School Engagement and Levels of Autism Characteristics. J Autism Dev Disord (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-024-06288-4

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