Mother–Stranger Comparisons of Social Attention in Jealousy Context and Attachment in HFASD and Typical Preschoolers

Abstract

Affective bonding, social attention, and intersubjective capabilities are all conditions for jealousy, and are deficient in autism. Thus, examining jealousy and attachment may elucidate the socioemotional deficit in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Jealousy was provoked in 30 high-functioning children with ASD (HFASD) and 30 typical children (ages 3-6 years) through two triadic social (storybook-reading) scenarios - mother-child-rival and stranger-child-rival. A control nonsocial scenario included mother/stranger-book. For both groups, higher jealousy expressions emerged for mother than stranger, and for social than nonsocial scenarios. Attachment security (using Attachment Q-Set) was lower for HFASD than typical groups, but attachment correlated negatively with jealous verbalizations for both groups and with jealous eye gazes for HFASD. Implications for understanding jealousy's developmental complexity and the socioemotional deficit in ASD are discussed.

There Is No Joy like Malicious Joy: Schadenfreude in Young Children

“…These measures provide a comprehensive assessment of children's real-time emotional reaction and the amount of these reactions. The jealousy scales were the same scales used in previous studies [31], [32], [33] derived from the behaviors, verbalizations, and affects identified as jealousy indices by previous research (e.g. [34], [35]).…”

“…Phase 1: Based on Bauminger-Zvieli and Kugelmass [33], this 4-point scale was designed to assess a possible change in children's negative affect before versus during the jealousy provoking social scenario. Coding, ranging from 1 (very negative affect) to 4 (very positive affect), was executed twice: Time 1 - when the peer-rival entered the room and each child played alone with his/her toys; Time 2 – when the mother took the peer onto her lap and read him/her a story.…”

“…It should be noted that the scoring system was based on Bauminger-Zvieli and Kugelmass [33]. This scoring method does not allow measuring change in affect during the EQUAL situation as Time 2 is missing in this scenario (the mother does not take a peer onto her lap).…”

Jealousy in Infants

“…Studies by Bauminger and associates (Bauminger 2010;Bauminger et al 2008;Bauminger-Zvieli and Kugelmass 2013) explored jealousy primarily with the aim of understanding its presentation among children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, the inclusion of a comparison group of typically developing preschoolers afforded opportunity to examine jealousy among children of this age.…”

“…Findings on typicallydeveloping 32-month-olds revealed that negativity was greater during the condition in which the peer was present. Recent work with 55-month-olds (Bauminger-Zvieli and Kugelmass 2013) included conditions in which the peer was again either present or absent, and where the adult was either mother or a stranger. Findings revealed that jealousy was greater if the peer was present and if the adult was mother.…”