Mothers' expressed emotion towards children with autism spectrum disorder and their siblings

Background: Expressed emotion (EE) is a construct used to measure the emotional climate within families. EE is of interest to researchers in the field of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) because of its putative implications for child development. The aim was to explore whether maternal EE differs towards a child with ASD and a non-disabled sibling. Methods: We adopted a within-family design with 143 mothers of children with ASD and a non-disabled sibling. EE was measured using the Five-Minute Speech Sample. Results: Wilcoxon signed-rank tests were utilised. Mothers were coded as significantly more critical and less warm towards their child with ASD than towards the sibling. There were no significant differences in maternal emotional overinvolvement or overall EE towards the child with ASD and a sibling. Conclusions: The data support the results of previous research suggesting that EE is linked to the relationship a mother has with individual children, rather than being evidence of the character disposition of mothers. More research is needed to understand the emotional dimensions of parent-child relationships in families with children with ASD.