Comparing emotional cry tear protein, crying behavior & emotional regulation among children with autism and typically developing children / Nurul’ain Shuhaimi

Crying is actually the first form of communication of infant to their caregivers’ regardless atypical or typically developing children. There were study conducted in determine differences between children with autism and typically developing children in crying, and it have been prove that children with autism pattern of crying is different from typically developing children. Also there were currently no study done regarding component of protein in emotional cry tear in children with autism. There were two aspect that focused on this study, the first was to see whether there are any relationship between emotion regulation and emotional cry between children with autism and typically developing children. Second was identified the any trace of protein in emotional cry tears and compare the level of concentration in emotional cry tears protein in children with autism and typically developing children. 64 sample participate in this study with age range from 7-12 years old, 32 for each group (children with autism and typically developing children) participate in the first aspect of this study, and total of 19 subject participate in the second aspect of the study, consist of 5 typically developing children and 14 children with autism. Social And Emotional Cry Questionnaire Emotional Regulation Social Skill Questionnaire (ERSSQ) and Social and Emotional Cry Questionnaire (SECQ) were used to measure emotional regulation and crying behavior in this study. There was statistic significant difference between ERSSQ and SECQ with p-value 0.038. There are trace of Human Adrenocorticotropic Hormone (ACTH) that detected in emotional cry tears in both group. Through this study, there was a Means difference in the emotional cry tears protein (ACTH concentration) between children with autism and typically developing children however, result was not statically significant. There are significant different in emotion regulation and crying behavior between children with autism and typically developing children. The sample means were different between the two groups, but there were no statistical significant different in cry tears protein concentration. This may be due to the sample size is too small. In future research, study needs to be done involving larger sample size.