Relationship between Emotional Support for Parents and Autistic Children's Participation in Social and Physical Activities.

The purpose of this study was to determine if parents receiving emotional support is positively correlated with children's participation in physical and social activities and if such a correlation exists between parental emotional support in children labeled as autistic. Data were drawn from 30,501 children aged 6 to 17 years in the 2020 National Survey of Children's Health database and analyzed using a retrospective cross-sectional approach based on multivariate linear regression models. Results showed parental emotional support was statistically significantly correlated with children's physical and social activity in the total sample but was not significant for the emotional support of parents with autistic children.

Predictors of Participation Difficulties in Autistic Children.

Importance: Participation in meaningful occupations supports quality of life and health. Because quality of life is lower in autistic children than in children without this diagnosis, it is important to consider aspects contributing to the participation difficulties this population experiences.

Objective: To identify predictors of participation difficulties in a large data set from autistic children to inform professionals about potential intervention targets.

Investigating the developmental timing of self-regulation in early childhood.

Self-regulation often refers to the executive influence of cognitive resources to alter prepotent responses. The ability to engage cognitive resources as a form of executive process emerges and improves in the preschool-age years while the dominance of prepotent responses, such as emotional reactions, begins to decline from toddlerhood onward. However, little direct empirical evidence addresses the timing of an age-related increase in executive processes and a decrease in age-related prepotent responses over the course of early childhood.

Art Interventions for Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Scoping Review.

Importance: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurological condition characterized by impairments in social interaction, communication, and behavior. Occupational therapy practitioners use creative arts interventions for children with ASD, but relevant evidence for these interventions is lacking.

Objective: To provide occupational therapists evidence of the benefit of creative arts interventions for children with ASD by evaluating treatment efficacy and connecting the evidence with the Occupational Therapy Practice Framework: Domain and Process (4th ed.