Temperament predicts challenging behavior in children with autism spectrum disorder at age 5.
High negative affect in preschoolers with ASD forecasts more frequent challenging behavior two years later—screen early and target emotion regulation.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team followed preschoolers with autism for two years. They measured each child’s temperament at age three. Then they counted how often challenging behaviors showed up at age five.
No control group was used. The goal was to see if early mood traits forecast later problems.
What they found
Kids who scored high on “negative affectivity” at three had more hitting, yelling, and tantrums at five. Temperament traits together explained almost half of the later behavior trouble.
Only negative affect, not shyness or activity level, uniquely predicted the frequency of problems.
How this fits with other research
Mulder et al. (2020) pooled many studies and found children with autism usually show more negative mood after diagnosis, yet babies who later get the label often start out looking “easy.” Siobhan’s result fits the later-childhood part of that picture.
Chetcuti et al. (2020) worked with even younger children and saw infant negative affect link caregiver stress to social-emotional problems. Together the papers trace a line: early negative mood matters from infancy through preschool.
Fredriksen et al. (2025) showed autistic preschoolers already score more than one standard deviation higher on emotion dysregulation. Siobhan adds the forward-looking news: those high scores at three keep forecasting trouble at five.
Why it matters
You can spot risk early by adding a quick temperament checklist to your intake. When negative affect pops up, plan emotion-regulation skills right away—before problem behavior grows. Share the score with parents so they know why you’re teaching coping tools, not just compliance.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Challenging behaviors during early childhood have a significant impact on cognitive and social development. The present study aimed to identify the developmental predictors of these behaviors in preschool aged children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) at 2-year follow-up. We examined temperament, which has been identified as key to emotion regulation in typical development, as well as developmental level and ASD symptom severity, as potential predictors of parent-reported challenging behavior. METHOD: Forty-three parents of preschool aged children with ASD from a previous study were invited to participate. Data from 26 children with ASD aged 4-6 years (M = 5, SD = .60) were available for follow-up analyses. Developmental level, ASD symptom severity, and temperamental difficulty at baseline were considered as potential predictors of frequency and severity of challenging behavior at follow-up. RESULTS: Baseline negative affectivity was uniquely predictive of frequency of challenging behavior at follow-up. Although no individual variable was identified as a unique predictor of variance, the combined effects of temperament were predictive of the severity of challenging behavior at follow-up, contributing to 46 % of variance in scores. CONCLUSIONS: These findings highlight the potential impact of emotion-regulation related aspects of temperament on later emerging challenging behavior in young children with ASD, suggesting opportunities for early intervention. Results also identified a role for developmental level in the severity of challenging behavior, but suggest that the effect may be metered by temperament.
Research in autism spectrum disorders, 2020 · doi:10.1016/j.rasd.2019.101492