Title: Employment Decisions in Mothers of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Authors: Naomi Ekas, Ph.D., Deborah Rafferty, Allie Benson

Introduction: It is very common for at least one parent of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to quit their job to care for this child (Stoner & Stoner, 2016). Some research suggests that parents of children with ASD are four times as likely to quit, change, or not take a job compared to parents with typically developing children (Montes & Halterman, 2008). These high rates of career disruption can have effects on both the parent quitting their career and the one continuing their career. Typically, it is mothers of children with ASD whose careers are impacted the most. Mothers disproportionately quit their jobs compared to fathers to care for a child with ASD and the mothers who continue their professional career face issues at work such as working fewer hours, having to change jobs, and not accepting promotions (Baker & Drapela, 2010). However, there is a dearth of prior research that examines why parents of children with ASD decide to quit their jobs or remain working outside the home after their child’s diagnosis. Thus, the first goal of this current study is to determine the factors underlying the reason mothers of children with ASD decide to quit her job versus continuing to work outside of the home.

Due to the array of challenges mothers face in caring for a child with ASD, these mothers face several mental health challenges. In general, research suggests that mothers of children with ASD experience more stress, less self-efficacy and parental competence, and lower overall health ratings than parents of typically developing children and children with other special needs (Herring et al., 2006; Pisula, 2007; Yamada et al., 2007). However, there is a dearth of research on the effects staying in a career versus quitting work to care for a child with ASD have on a mother of a child with ASD’s mental health. Thus, the second goal of this research is to determine the effects quitting a job to care for a child with ASD has on a mother’s mental health versus the effects staying in a career while parenting a child with ASD have on a mother’s mental health.

Methods: We recruited mothers of children with ASD who chose to remain in the professional workforce while raising their child with ASD and who quit their job to care for their child with ASD. All mothers reside in the United States, are married, and have a child with ASD between the ages of 10 and 17. Participants completed a 45-60 minute online Qualtrics survey that included demographic measures, mental health measures, and questions about their employment decisions.

Results/Discussion: Data is still being collected for this study. We will utilize SPSS to perform statistical techniques.

Introduction: There is a vast range of deficits and behavioral issues associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), which leads families with children with ASD to experience greater amounts of stress compared to families of neurotypical children (Bayat & Schuntermann, 2013). An additional factor that may exacerbate the stress families with children with ASD are under is the COVID-19 pandemic, which has contributed to disrupted routines and increased anxiety and can result in an increase in challenging behavior for some individuals with ASD (Autism Speaks, 2020). In addition to the stress of the pandemic, the current social unrest evident by national racial protests following the killing of George Floyd may exacerbate stress in families, particularly families of color. The current study aims to contribute to the paucity of research regarding parent mental health and family functioning in families of color with children with ASD. Due to the stress of raising a child with ASD being exacerbated by the pandemic and the racial inequality protests in families of color, I hypothesized that families of color with children with ASD would experience higher rates of stress and have poorer family functioning compared to White families.
Methods: Participants were caregivers of children with ASD who were recruited from the community through local schools, flyers, and online advertisements. Participants completed a Qualtrics survey in April and the second survey in July. The surveys included questions regarding parents’ stress, anxiety, and depression levels associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and how this impacted family function. To analyze stress-levels regarding the racial protests that began in May, the July survey included questions regarding levels of distress about the protests and how families perceived their interactions with the police.
Results/Discussion: The data for the current study is still being analyzed.

Previous research has found that people can become self-radicalized (i.e., adopt more extreme attitudes in the absence of new information) by merely thinking about a group. A number of studies in our research lab have also found that people can become self-radicalized when they engage in a specific type of thought strategy, namely extrapolating from known to unknown traits about a group. The current experiment examined whether differences in trait imageability, or the ability to form a mental image of a trait, influence the effects of extrapolation on self-radicalization toward a negatively perceived outgroup. We found that regardless of trait imageability, participants who extrapolated reported more extreme attitudes and behavioral intentions toward the outgroup compared to control participants. More importantly, however, participants who extrapolated to traits that were difficult to form a mental image of subsequently reported more extreme attitudes and behavioral intentions toward the outgroup, compared to participants who extrapolated to traits that were easy to form a mental image of and compared to control participants. The current results established an initial link between self-radicalization and thinking about trait information that is relatively difficult to process.

Previous work illustrates that people’s judgments of the memorability of stimuli is affected by the perceptual features of those stimuli, even when there is no actual difference in memory (Rhodes & Castel, 2008). There is, however, a gap in the research about how such metacognitive illusions relate to other common misconceptions about how memory works. The present study examined the connection between so-called perceptual fluency effects and the common misconception that students learn best when content is presented in line with their individualized learning styles (e.g., auditory learners, visual learners, etc.). Participants were asked questions to gauge their perceptions of learning styles, then studied and made judgments about words that were presented in either large or small fonts (a manipulation that has been shown to affect judgments, but not actual memory performance). After a delay, participants took a free recall test, and were asked to make a global judgment about whether they remembered the large or small words better. We found that 43.47% of participants endorsed visual learning styles, 21.75% endorsed kinesthetic learning styles, 8.69% endorsed auditory learning styles, and the other 26.09% did not endorse a specific learning style. We also examine the relationship between learning styles and fluency effects.
Keywords: individualized learning styles, fluency effects, judgments of learning, metacognitive biases

Influence of socioeconomic status on rhythm perception in children with and without dyslexia
Nathania Davis, Vishal Thakkar, John Solorzano Restrepo, Abby Engelhart, Tracy Centanni
Department of Psychology, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX 76129

Development of strong reading skills takes years of practice and instruction, but such skills are critical for future success academically, vocationally, and in everyday life. In spite of the early start to reading instruction in the United States, up to 15 percent of children fail to learn to read and approximately 21 percent of adults meet the Department of Education’s criteria for low English literacy (NCES, 2014). One risk factor for poor reading outcomes is the child’s socioeconomic status (SES). Previous research has demonstrated a significant and positive relationship between children’s SES and their reading abilities, such that children from more advantaged backgrounds develop better reading skills (Bowey, 1995), (Corso, 2016). Interestingly, reading skills may also be correlated with rhythm perception. Children who struggle to read also appear to struggle in the ability to detect slight changes in rhythmic patterns (Overy et al., 2003). It is currently unknown why these two skills are related and whether SES impacts the development of rhythm perception. The goal of the current study was to examine the SES-rhythm relationship among typically developing children (TD) and those with dyslexia (DYS). Data were collected from 36 TD children and 25 DYS children. Children completed a series of virtual reading assessments and information about the child’s history and home environment was collected from the parents. Children then completed a rhythm matching task (Dolloghan and Campbell, 1998) in which they heard two patterns and reported whether they were the same or different. Early analyses suggest that SES and rhythm processing are not significantly related. We discuss the implications of these findings on the development of rhythm-based interventions for children who are at risk for lower reading skills.