Anxiety and Trauma-Related Disorders in Children on the Autism Spectrum.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: To summarize recent findings regarding anxiety and trauma-related disorders in children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (autism), focusing on the distinct ways in which these conditions may be expressed, as well as advances in evidence-based assessment and treatment. RECENT FINDINGS: Current findings suggest both anxiety and trauma-related disorders may be more prevalent, yet more complicated to address in autistic relative to non-autistic children. Overlapping symptoms and distinct manifestations of these disorders pose challenges for the accurate identification, assessment, and treatment of anxiety and trauma-related disorders in autistic children. Emerging evidence recommends adapting traditional assessment and treatment approaches to better meet the needs of autistic children. Recent research suggests autism-centered conceptualizations, which accommodate complexity in how anxiety and trauma-related disorders are experienced and expressed by autistic people, are needed to enhance the psychiatric care of this population.

Are autistic traits associated with a social-emotional memory bias?

Autistic traits are associated with differential processing of emotional and social cues. By contrast little is known about the relationship of autistic traits to socio-emotional memory, though research suggests an integral relationship between episodic memory processes and psychosocial well-being. Using an experimental paradigm, we tested if autistic traits moderate the effects of negative emotion and social cues on episodic memory (i.e. memory for past events). Young adults (N = 706) with varied levels of self-reported autistic traits (24% in clinical range) encoded images stratified by emotion (negative, neutral) and social cues (social, non-social) alongside a neutral object. After 24 h, item memory for images and associative memory for objects was tested. For item memory, after controlling for anxiety, a small effect emerged whereby a memory-enhancing effect of social cues was reduced as autistic traits increased. For associative memory, memory for pairings between neutral, but not negative, images reduced as autistic traits increased. Results suggest autistic traits are associated with reduced ability to bind neutral items together in memory, potentially impeding nuanced appraisals of past experience. This bias toward more negative, less nuanced memories of past experience may represent a cognitive vulnerability to social and mental health challenges commonly associated with autistic traits and a potential intervention target.

Episodic memory through a social and emotional lens.

Negative emotion enhances item memory but may reduce associative memory. Social information may also enhance memory, yet how social and emotional cues combine to affect memory for focal and surrounding details is unknown. Gender differences may also exist, but whether women and men encode and remember negative and social information differently is unclear. This study examines how social information contributes to or interacts with emotion to influence item and associative memory, and whether gender plays a role in how social and/or emotional information is recognized. Discovery and replication samples (N = 706) were recruited. Stimuli included (1) images with varying social and emotional content categorized into four conditions: negative social, negative nonsocial, neutral social, neutral nonsocial and (2) neutral images of objects paired with target stimuli to assess associative memory. Participants viewed the image pairings (Encoding). Twenty-four hours later, item and associative recognition memory were tested. Item recognition memory was better for negative vs. neutral and social vs. nonsocial images. By contrast, associative recognition memory was worse for negative vs. neutral, but better for social vs. nonsocial images. Finally, women demonstrated similar item memory performance compared to men but better associative recognition memory performance overall compared to men. Emotional and social cues impart distinct effects on how we form holistic episodic memories, highlighting the importance of considering these critical factors when striving to understand how and what we remember. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).