Negative Automatic Thoughts, Emotion Regulation, and Anxious and Depressive Symptoms in Autistic Adults

Abstract

Anxiety and depressive disorders are two of the more prominent co-occurring conditions experienced by autistic adults and have been linked to repetitive negative thinking (McKenney et al, 2023). Emotion regulation is a transdiagnostic feature found in anxiety/depression, and autistic adults were found to use maladaptive emotion regulation strategies more frequently than typically developing adults (Cai et al, 2018). However, the relationships among emotion regulation, negative thinking, and anxiety/depression has not yet been tested in autistic adults. Thus, the current study evaluated the relationships among negative automatic thoughts (NAT), depression/anxiety, and emotion regulation, as well as the possible indirect effect of emotion regulation in the relationship between negative automatic thoughts and anxious and depressive symptoms, in a community sample of autistic adults. 144 adult participants ((Mage = 38.06, 19 - 79 years); 42.8% female, 35.9% male, 3.4% non-binary, 17.9% other-reported gender) completed the AQ-10 Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ-10; Allison, Auyeung, & Baron Cohen, 2012), the Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire-8 (ATQ-8; Netemeyer et al., 2002), the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ, Gross & John, 2003), and the PROMIS measures of Anxiety and Depression (Cella et al., 2010). PROCESS Macro was used to test the hypothesis. Results indicated a direct effect of NAT on anxious and depressive symptoms; however, no indirect effects were found and no direct effects between NAT and cognitive reappraisal/expressive suppression were shown. Implications for this study include intervention strategies focusing on negative thinking, which could impact depressive and anxious symptoms in autistic adults.