The study covered in this summary was published on Medrxiv.org as a preprint and has not yet been peer reviewed.
Key Takeaways
Mask wearing was significantly challenging for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and resulted in difficulty in referring to the emotions of others while wearing masks
This study provides insight to the impact of public health policies on social communication skills of children with ASD and their ability to adapt to a new environment
Why This Matters
This study presents novel evidence of the impact of COVID-19 on psychological states specific to children with ASD
Public health policies, such as mask wearing, have the potential to negatively affect the social communication skills of children with ASD, particularly those with restricted and repetitive behaviors (RRB)
Study Design
This study used the CoRonavIruS Health Impact Survey (CRISIS) — Adapted for Autism and Related Neurodevelopmental conditions (AFAR) to evaluate sleep, exercise, and RRB problems in 102 participants with a clinical diagnosis of ASD
75 (73.5%) participants were male
Mean age of participants was 11.6 years
One set of questions gathered information regarding behavior 3 months prior to the pandemic, and the second focused on behavior during the past 2 weeks of the study period, during the pandemic
The Spearmans’ rank correlation was used to analyze between the lower- and higher-order RRB symptoms and the impact of mask wearing on the CRISIS-AFAR-Japan
