Behavioral Affect in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder during School Closures Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Japan: A Case-Controlled Study

ABSTRACT

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) could experience more stress due to the changes consequent to school closures because of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. This study investigated differences in behavioral affect between children with ASD and typically developing children (TD). We conducted an online survey with mothers. The data of 84 children with ASD and 361 TD children aged 6 to 18 years were analyzed. Children with ASD were more frustrated due to the changes in their schedule and engaged more in restricted and repetitive behavior. Children with ASD had different types of behavioral affect compared to TD.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank all participating patients and the study site staff for their contributions.

Disclosure statement

The authors have declared that they have no competing or potential conflicts of interests.

Contributorships

K.K. conceived, designed, and coordinated the study and helped draft the manuscript. K.N. and A.Y. were involved in data acquisition. R.H. was the study statistician and contributed to the study design, data collection, interpretation of data, preparation of the study report, manuscript writing, and reading and approving the drafts. F.H. and S.U. participated in the interpretation of data, manuscript writing, critical review, and revising the manuscript. All authors approved the final manuscript for publication. The authors thank all participants and the study site staff for their contributions.

Ethical approval

This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Ehime University Graduate School of Medicine (IRB No. 2,006,014). The results of experimental investigation with human subjects were reported. We had obtained written parental consent in participants.

Data accessibility

The data can be found at: https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/Behavioral_affect_in_Children_with_Autism_Spectrum_Disorder_During_School_Closures_due_to_COVID-19_Pandemic_in_Japan_A_Case-Controlled_Study/13292102

Additional information

Funding

No funding was received for this study.