Nearly 1 in 45 U.S. adults are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, or ASD for short. ASD is a neurodevelopmental condition associated with difficulties with social interactions, repetitive behaviors, and communication. Many autistic individuals experience concurrent ADHD and/or anxiety which can exacerbate autistic traits and significantly impact quality of life. Informant discrepancies, when multiple raters’ scores differ from one another on tests measuring severity of autistic traits, have gained significant attention in understanding the experiences of autistic individuals. Minimal research has been done on how concurrent conditions affect informant discrepancy for autistic adults. My study examined how concurrent ADHD and anxiety can influence informant discrepancies in adults with ASD. 

In the study, we gathered data on 144 adults with a mean age of 35.94. We placed the adults placed into 4 different categories, depending on their co-occurrence of ADHD and/or anxiety. 19 participants had ASD with no concurrent conditions, 18 had ASD + ADHD, 59 had ASD + anxiety, and 48 had ASD + ADHD + anxiety. Each participant filled out the Social Responsiveness Scale 2nd Edition (SRS-2) and the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Functions (BRIEF). Aside from the self report completed by the individual, we also gathered an informant report which was completed by their child, parent, sibling, spouse, or other individual such as their friend.  

We performed regressions on the data and analyzed the results and found that self report SRS-2 and BRIEF scores were correlated with one another, along with informant report SRS-2 and BRIEF scores. Self and informant BRIEF scores were correlated as well, however Self and informant report SRS-2 scores were not significantly correlated. Across both BRIEF and SRS-2 scores, self and informant report scores did not significantly differ from one another in ASD participants with no concurrent conditions or ASD+ADHD participants. However, Self and informant report scores were significantly different in ASD + anxiety and and ASD + ADHD + anxiety participants on both the BRIEF and SRS-2. Discrepancy was shown to be greatest among self and informant report SRS-2 scores. When considering concurrent conditions, the presence of concurrent anxiety has been shown to skew mean self report scores, creating a discrepancy with its respective informant reports. We found that when anxiety is present, self-reports tend to skew higher than informant reports.