Emotion Regulation, Personality and Social Adjustment in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

The study examines how emotion regulation and emotion dysregulation in 3 12 years old children with autism spectrum disorders (n = 39) are linked with the five factors of personality and their social adjustment. Children were assessed by means of the Differential Scales of Intellectual Efficiency-Revised edition (EDEI-R). The teachers have completed the CARS-T, the Bipolar Rating Scales based on the Five Factor Model (EBMCF) and the French version of Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC-vf) and a Social Adjustment scale (including items related to Theory of Mind, EASEToM, and related to social rules, EASE-Social-Skills). Positive and significant correlations are obtained between emotion regulation scores and verbal developmental age, personality factors of openness, agreeableness, and extraversion. The emotion dysregulation score is negatively and significantly linked with the factor of emotional stability, but positively and significantly linked with extraversion. Moreover, emotion regulation scores are positively and significantly linked with scores in social adjustment. Linear regression by stepwise shows that both extraversion and agreeableness explain 66.5% of the variance of the emotion regulation score; and extraversion, agreeableness and emotional stability explain 68.3% of the variance of the emotion dysregulation score. The openness explains 55.9% of the variance of the EASE-ToM score. Both agreeableness and extraversion explain 61.6% of the variance of the EASE-Social Skills score.