Brief report: The impact of the broad autism phenotype on parent perception of autism symptoms in their children with and without autism spectrum disorder compared to teachers.
Parents with more autism-like traits systematically over-rate autism symptoms—check BAP status before trusting caregiver SRS scores alone.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Muller et al. (2022) asked 88 parents and the teachers to fill out the Social Responsiveness Scale.
Half the kids had autism, half were typically developing.
Parents also took the Broad Autism Phenotype Questionnaire so the team could see if mild autism-like traits colored their ratings.
What they found
Parents who scored high on the BAPQ said their kids had far more autism symptoms than teachers did.
The gap was biggest for kids without an autism diagnosis.
Even teachers saw slightly more symptoms in typical kids from high-BAP homes, but the parent jump was twice as large.
How this fits with other research
Emerson et al. (2007) created the BAPQ and showed it spots subtle autism traits in relatives; Kristen now shows those same traits inflate parent reports.
Eggleston et al. (2018) warned that parent and teacher CASD forms miss many kids—Kristen gives one reason why: parent BAP adds noise.
Greene et al. (2019) found teachers rate adaptive skills higher than parents; Kristen finds the reverse for autism symptoms, pointing to a systematic rater bias pattern.
Why it matters
Before you trust an SRS score from mom or dad, glance at their BAPQ total. If it is high, balance it with teacher data, ADOS results, or direct observation. This simple check can cut false positives and spare typical kids from needless labels.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Evaluation of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) includes caregiver-reported rating scales of symptom presentation. The extent to which a broad autism phenotype (BAP) in parents of children with ASD might impact their endorsement of autism symptoms in their children with and without ASD has not been well evaluated. AIMS: This study analyzed whether varying degrees of parental BAP were associated with reported autism symptoms in offspring with and without ASD. METHODS AND PROCEDURES: We used the Broad Autism Phenotype Questionnaire as a measure of BAP in parents and parent- and teacher-report on the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS) to assess autism symptoms in children with ASD and their typically developing (TD) siblings (N = 5714). We assessed the relationship between parental BAP and parent-teacher discordance. We compared teacher reports of autism symptoms in children with varying degrees of BAP exposure. OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: Mothers with higher levels of BAP over-reported autism symptoms in their children (compared to teachers) than mothers with lower BAP. TD children from parents with greater BAP displayed more autism symptoms than children from households with less BAP. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: BAP is associated with parent report of autism symptoms when compared to teacher report. For children with ASD, it is possible that differences in ratings reflect parent perception and not autism symptomatology; whereas, TD children from households with higher levels of BAP exposure showed more phenotypic autism symptom presentation on teacher-completed measures. Researchers and clinicians should consider BAP when interpreting caregiver and teacher reports.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2022 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2022.104231