ArticleAutism : the international journal of research and practice2022
Exposure to family stressful life events in autistic children: Longitudinal associations with mental health and the moderating role of cognitive flexibility.
Article in Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 19 citations in OpenAlex.
- Examining the relationship between cognitive inflexibility and internalizing and externalizing symptoms in autistic children and adolescents: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2022Pooled it
- Internal and external factors related to anxiety and depression in parents of children with autism: the significance of psychological resilience.BMC public health · 2026Article
- Processes Associated with the Development of Depression in Autistic Individuals: A Narrative Review.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences and Mental Health on School Success in Autistic Children: Findings from the 2016-2021 National Survey of Children's Health.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2025Article
- Cognitive Flexibility Mediates the Associations Between Perceived Stress, Social Camouflaging and Mental Health Challenges in Autistic Adults.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2025Article
- Using Psychoacoustic Tasks and Multidimensional Questionnaires to Characterize Auditory Hyperreactivity in Autistic Young People.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2025Article
- Longitudinal associations between autistic children's anxiety and social communication differences: The moderating role of executive function behaviours.Autism : the international journal of research and practice · 2025Article
- An Exploratory Study of Resilience to Stressful Life Events in Autistic Children.Research in autism spectrum disorders · 2024Article
- A longitudinal comparison of emotional, behavioral and attention problems in autistic and typically developing children.Psychological medicine · 2023Article
- Measuring flexibility in autistic adults: Exploring the factor structure of the flexibility scale self report.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2023Article
- Mental health challenges faced by autistic people.Nature human behaviour · 2023Review
- Infant excitation/inhibition balance interacts with executive attention to predict autistic traits in childhood.Molecular autism · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
15 authors at 8 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
lay abstractExperiencing stressful life events, such as a parent having had serious illness, parental divorce, bullying and victimization, is known to increase risk for mental health difficulties in neurotypical children. However, few studies have looked at whether stressful life events have a similar impact in autistic youth and if any individual characteristics may moderate the impact of said life events. In this study, we tested whether in autistic children aged 7-11 years, exposure to family-level stressful life events predicted later mental health symptoms (and vice versa). We also tested whether associations between stressful life events and mental health symptoms differed depending on the child's level of cognitive flexibility. We found stressful life events only predicted internalizing symptoms (such as anxiety and depression) in children with clinically significant difficulties in cognitive flexibility (as rated by their parents). Mental health symptoms did not predict future exposure to stressful life events. Results suggest that information about exposure to stressful life events and cognitive inflexibility may be helpful in identifying autistic children who may be at risk of developing anxiety and depression symptoms.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.