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).

Findings: With the exception of one EE component, emotional over-involvement, the revised coding system demonstrated adequate internal consistency and good to excellent inter-rater and code-recode reliability. It also demonstrated acceptable validity, based on its significant correlations with factors linked to EE in previous research. Regression analyses also indicated AFMSS-EE to be a significant predictor of child social competence, but not child problem behaviors.

Discussion: While further testing is required, the AFMSS appears to be a useful method of assessing EE within the context of parenting children with autism and related disorders.