Investigating the association between generalized anxiety symptoms and social and communication impairments of autistic youth

Background: Past research has found that overall anxiety and social anxiety symptoms are associated with the occurrence of social and communication challenges within autistic populations. Objective: The aim of this study was to determine whether generalized anxiety disorder symptoms were associated with social and communication symptoms in autistic youth. Method: The cross-sectional sample was comprised of 253 autistic youth aged 8-18 (196 Males, 57 Females). Participants were divided in a child (Grade 3-8) group and an adolescent (Grade 9-12) group. A hierarchical linear regression analysis was conducted to evaluate whether the generalized anxiety score predicted the social communication composite score, derived from the ADOS-2, after controlling for sex, grade level and expressive language ability. Results: Correlation analyses showed an association between social communication ability and general anxiety disorder symptoms in the child group such that those with greater anxiety had fewer social communication symptoms. However, after controlling for sex, grade, and language ability, general anxiety disorder symptoms did not predict social communication difficulties in either children or adolescents. Conclusions: Alongside past literature, these findings suggest that the different types of anxiety disorders may have differential impacts on autistic youth's social and communication symptoms. Further research should investigate whether other anxiety subtypes affect autistic youth's social and communication symptoms.