"Out of sight out of mind": attentional characteristics in mothers who have children with autism.

BACKGROUND

Families are faced with enormous challenges in caring for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) over a lifetime. As the main caregiver of children, mothers who have children with autism are in poor health compared to the mothers of typically developing (TD) children. Previous studies have revealed that the mental health of mothers has a direct impact on children. On the other hand, attention bias (AB) can be an important indicator of the mental status. Therefore, the characteristic of AB of mothers who have children with autism can be a window into the treatment of autism.

METHODS

In this study, 28 mothers who have children with autism and 31 mothers of typically developing children completed the modified dot-probe task to explore the attention bias.

RESULTS

We found that there was a significant difference of AB between mothers who have children with autism and mothers of typically developing children, which indicated that mothers who have children with autism tend to avoid negative emotional words.

CONCLUSIONS

The current study illuminates the attentional characteristics of mothers who have children with autism toward emotional words, which provides a new starting point for the intervention of mothers of children with autism.