Cynthia Brown

Objective To examine the relative contribution of family functioning to friendship quality in youths with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Background Youths with ASD often experience problems in their friendships. Although researchers have identified linkages between individual youth characteristics and friendship difficulties in youths with ASD, much less is known about the possible linkages between family and friendship problems in this population. However, the family system is an important context in which youths with ASD can learn skills that are necessary for developing friendships. Method The current study examined the relations of key dimensions of family functioning and caregiver romantic relationships to central domains of friendship quality in youths with ASD, while also accounting for individual characteristics of the youths. Participants included youths with ASD ( N = 93) and their primary caregivers who completed measures that assessed family, caregiver, and friendship variables. Results Hierarchical linear regression models revealed that family functioning and caregiver romantic relationships explained significant variance in domains of youth friendship quality above and beyond individual youth characteristics. Conclusion Friendships in youths with ASD were more strongly related to important elements of the family system than to various characteristics of the individual youth. Implications Family relations should be considered in interventions that aim to improve peer relations for youth with ASD.

Despite the prevalence of special interests (SIs) in autistic youth, research on SIs and how they are characterized is limited. Indeed, a significant challenge in identifying and classifying SIs lies in capturing the vast and diverse scope of potential interests in this population. The recently developed Special Interest Survey (SIS) is a caregiver‐report measure to improve SI characterization by capturing a broad range of past and current SIs. In the present study, we performed a network analysis of the SIS to examine relations between SIs and identify distinct interest clusters. We analyzed data from 1992 caregivers of autistic youths who completed the SIS. The network of SIs was densely interconnected, characterized by six communities of interests: Fact‐seeking, Engineering, Order‐seeking, Object Attachment, Entertainment, and Scholarly Pursuits. Findings suggest that the structure of the observed network is likely to generalize to similar samples. Of all the SIs and their respective communities, behaviors related to Fact‐seeking were identified as the most central, meaning that endorsement of these interests was most strongly related to co‐endorsement of other SIs. These findings lay the groundwork for future work on SIs, such as improved assessment techniques and linkage of SIs to a broad range of demographic variables, youth characteristics, and autism symptoms.