ترس از ریشخند در ارتباط با دلبستگی والدین در افراد مبتلا به اوتیسم

The model of putative causes and consequences of gelotophobia (i.e., the fear of being laughed at) assumes that the fear of being laughed at develops as a consequence of (1) individuals’ having been laughed at over a long period of time and (2) failing interactions with parents. Past studies show that individuals with autism are subjected to being laughed at and that they tend to worry about being laughed at or ridiculed, but empirical studies investigating the interactions of individuals with autism with parents and these connections between these interactions and gelotophobia have been lacking. The purpose of this study was to identify the characteristics of gelotophobia in individuals with autism and to determine how these characteristics are connected to parental attachment. This study was conducted on 101 students of average intelligence with autism and 163 without autism, with homogeneous ages and gender ratios between the groups. The methods of research consisted of the PhoPhiKat-TC questionnaire and the Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment (IPPA). Compared to students without autism, students with autism were found to exhibit a higher level of fear and dislike of being laughed at but showed no difference from students without autism in enjoying laughing at others. In addition, gelotophobia in students with autism was related to attachment to the student's father but not attachment to the mother, thereby implicating a role for paternal interactions in its development. To decrease the tendency that adolescents with autism have towards exhibiting gelotophobia, this study suggests improving child–father interactions through parent education.

Gelotophobia is the characteristic wherein individuals fear being laughed at (Ruch & Proyer, 2008a) and therefore feel anxious or worried; its putative causes include individuals’ being repeatedly ridiculed or laughed at in childhood and adolescence (Ruch, 2004, Titze, 2009, Ruch et al., 2010 and Proyer et al., 2012) and failing to develop interpersonal relationships with significant others in infancy (Proyer et al., 2012 and Proyer and Monica, 2013). Individuals with autism have severe difficulties with social interaction and communication (APA, 2013), and studies show that these difficulties result in being laughed at by peers and experiencing increased worry about being laughed at. However, one of the putative causes of gelotophobia, child–parent attachment, requires further empirical studies to be verified. This study thus proposes identifying the connection between gelotophobia and attachment to parents in individuals with autism to have a fuller understanding of the causes of gelotophobia.

Table 2 presents the values of the means, standard deviations, skewness coefficients, and kurtosis coefficients of the ratings of the IPPA and of the PhoPhiKat-TC administered to students with and without autism. The ratings of the PhoPhiKat-TC to both groups were positively skewed, with only the rating of gelotophilia tendency for students with autism forming a bell curve; the ratings of parental attachment to both groups were negatively skewed, which showed that most participants have good attachment to their parents. With respect to the kurtosis coefficient, the responses on the self-report questionnaire in both groups were platykurtically distributed; only the tendency towards gelotophobia was leptokurtically distributed. Table 2. Ratings of the PhoPhiKat and of the IPPA by students with autism and those without autism (control) (N = 264). Autism (N = 101) Control (N = 163) Mean SD Mean SD PhoPhiKat Gelotophobia 2.36 0.50 2.20 0.42 Gelotophilia 2.00 0.49 2.21 0.52 Katagelasticism 1.98 0.57 1.98 0.51 Parent attachment Attachment to father 3.40 0.69 3.41 0.76 Attachment to mother 3.66 0.68 3.60 0.84 Table options Then, the differences in the Pho–Phi–Kat scores were compared between the two groups. First, the result of the homogeneity of variance test showed that the two groups share similar distributions in every dimension of the Pho–Phi–Kat (Fs(1262) < 1.69, ps > 0.05). Students with autism scored much higher on gelotophobia (F(1263) = 7.99, p = 0.005, η2 = 0.03) and lower on gelotophilia (F(1263) = 10.79, p = 0.001, η2 = 0.04); for katagelasticism, both groups scored the same (F(1263) = 0.01, p = 0.946, η2 = 0.00). In the Taiwanese sample, students with autism are more afraid of being laughed at and dislike being mocked by others than are members of the control group; nevertheless, the tendency of ridiculing others exists with respect to the control group. Regarding parental attachment in these two groups, the result of a homogeneity of variance test between two groups shows that only paternal attachment was consistent with the hypothesis but maternal attachment was not. The Welch method was thus applied, and its results shows that both groups showed no significant differences between attachment to father (F(1263) = 0.03, p = 0.856, η2 = 0.00) and attachment to mother (F(1263) = 0.31, p = 0.574, η2 = 0.00), meaning in this sample of students in the Asian region, compared to those without autism, students with autism had a similar tendency towards parental attachments ( Table 3). Table 3. Correlations between attachment to parents and either gelotophobia, gelotophilia, or katagelasticism in the autism group and the control group. Phi Kat IPPA-D IPPA-M Autism group (N = 101) Pho 0.05 0.41** −0.16* −0.08 Phi 0.36** −0.01 −0.03 Kat −0.24* −0.23* IPPA-D 0.71** Control group (N = 163) Pho −0.16* 0.28** −0.21** −0.29** Phi 0.34** −0.12 0.07 Kat −0.23** −0.22** IPPA-D 0.56** * p < .05. ** p < .01. Table options Next, we examined the number of students considered gelotophobes in both groups. For the control group, 26% of the participants sat above the cutting point of 2.5, whereas in the autism group, the value rose to a much higher 40% (χ2(df = 3, n = 264) = 10.33, p = 0.01). In addition, only 5% of the control group crossed the threshold to the level of “marked”, whereas only 10% of the autism group crossed this experience. In addition, 4% of the autism groups reached the level of “extreme” in gelotophobia. It again shows that students with autism have a significant tendency towards Gelotophobia than the control group ( Fig. 1). Full-size image (12 K) Fig. 1. Percentages of individuals with no fear, at least a slight fear, at least marked fear, and an extreme form of fear of being laughed at in the autism (N = 101) and control groups (N = 163). Figure options 5.2. Correlations between Pho–Phi–Kat and attachment to parents In the autism group, the participants’ tendency towards gelotophobia had a notably negative correlation with paternal attachment (r = −0.16, p < 0.05), but it did not cord with attachment to mother (r = −0.08, p = 0.41), and all the relative coefficients were lower than those in the control group (t = −1.70, p < 0.05). On the other hand, in the control group, the participants’ tendency towards gelotophobia correlated negatively with both attachment to father (r = −0.21, p < 0.01) and attachment to mother (r = −0.29, p < 0.01), suggesting that students without autism had a lower tendency towards gelotophobia if they had a better attachment relationship with both parents. Additionally, in both groups, tendency towards katagelasticism correlated negatively with both attachment to father and attachment to mother (rs > −0.22, ps < 0.01).