Emotion Awareness and Skills Enhancement Program

The current study is to test a new intervention called Emotional Awareness and Skills Enhancement (EASE). This program was designed to address ASD-specific obstacles to effective emotion regulation, such as reduced awareness concerning others' intentions, a limited repertoire of behavioral responses, and inadequate language for understanding emotional experiences. This new program is based on an acceptance-based approach in which awareness of emotion is developed, emotions (whether negative or positive) are accepted, and behavior is regulated in the face of intense emotion. The goal is not to learn to avoid negative emotions, but rather to develop a collection of abilities which allow the individual to manage stress and act in ways that are more adaptive. The investigators expect to find that participants' emotion dysregulation will decrease and their adaptive function will increase following completion of the EASE program.