Assessing expressed emotion in mothers of children with autism: the Autism-Specific Five Minute Speech Sample.

Background: Expressed emotion (EE) is a measure of family emotional climate found to be predictive of symptom levels in a range of psychiatric, medical, and developmental disorders, including autism.

Method: Employing data from 104 mothers of children with autism, this study examines the Autism-Specific Five Minute Speech Sample (AFMSS), a modified EE coding system based on the widely used Five Minute Speech Sample (Magana et al., 1986).

Anger, stress proliferation, and depressed mood among parents of children with ASD: a longitudinal replication.

Stress proliferation (the tendency for stressors to create additional stressors) has been suggested as an important contributor to depression among caregivers. The present study utilized longitudinal data from 90 parents of children with ASD to replicate and extend a prior cross-sectional study on stress proliferation by Benson (J Autism Develop Disord 36:685-695, 2006). Consistent with Benson's earlier findings, regression analyses indicated that stress proliferation mediated the effect of child symptom severity on parent depression.

Maternal involvement in the education of young children with autism spectrum disorders.

Parent involvement is widely acknowledged to be a critical ;best practice' in the education of young children with ASD. Despite its importance, no studies to date have systematically examined the relative influence of child, family, and school factors on the extent to which parents participate in the education of their children with ASD. In the present study, questionnaire and interview data collected from the mothers and teachers of 95 children receiving public school services for ASD were used to address this issue.