Do children with autism acknowledge the influence of mood on behaviour?
Autistic kids can state mood rules but rarely use them unprompted, so give quick mood-label cues during social lessons.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Begeer et al. (2007) asked kids with high-functioning autism and typical kids to predict how a story character would act.
Some stories told the child’s mood first. Others gave no mood hint.
The team counted how often each child linked mood to behavior without being asked.
What they found
Both groups could say “happy people smile” when questioned.
Autistic kids named mood on their own far less often.
They also showed less grasp that mood can make future behavior uncertain.
How this fits with other research
Müller et al. (2006) saw the same pattern in family chats: autistic kids explained feelings only after an adult brought them up.
Gadow et al. (2006) and Legiša et al. (2013) add a twist. Skin, heart, and face data show autistic kids feel emotions physiologically like peers, but their words do not match those bodily cues.
Together the papers paint one picture: emotion knowledge is not missing, it is buried. Kids need an extra prompt to pull it out.
Why it matters
When you ask, “How will she feel?” a child with HFASD may answer correctly. That does not mean he saw the mood on his own. Add brief mood-label prompts before social-skills practice. Example: “Notice he lost his toy—how might he feel?” This small step links the internal feeling to the outward event and builds the spontaneous ties the study found lacking.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Before a social story, point to the character’s face and ask, “What feeling do you see?” then link that feeling to the next action.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
We tested whether children with and without high-functioning autism spectrum disorders (HFASD) differ in their understanding of the influence of mood states on behaviour. A total of 122 children with HFASD or typical development were asked to predict and explain the behaviour of story characters during hypothetical social interactions. HFASD and typically developing children predicted at equal rates that mood states likely result in similar valenced behaviour. ;Explicit' descriptions were used to explain predictions more often by children with HFASD than by typically developing children. However, ;implicit' and ;irrelevant' descriptions elicited fewer mood references among HFASD children. Furthermore, they less often referred to the uncertainty of the influence of mood on behaviour, and less often used mood-related explanations, in particular when they had to rely on implicit information. This may indicate a rote- rather than self-generated understanding of emotions in children with HFASD.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2007 · doi:10.1177/1362361307083262