Association between discharge teaching quality and caregiving competence among parents of preterm infants at NICU discharge: the mediating role of internal locus of control.

In recent years there has been increasing research, clinical, and public interest into the phenomenon of masking or camouflaging in autism (, ). A recent review noted the inconsistency with which research in this area uses and defines terms (); for clarity, in the present article, we define autistic masking as “concealing or changing autistic traits”. This could be considered synonymous with “camouflaging”, which has been used by some of the authors in previous work (, ); however, “masking” was considered the preferred term by the majority of members of the research collective conducting this work. In this article, we specifically focus on masking , although we acknowledge the limited extent to which masking of different aspects of identity can be disentangled (, ). Despite the recent proliferation of research into masking, validated tools to measure masking are still somewhat limited (). The most commonly used tool, the Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire (CAT-Q; ), is a self-report questionnaire for adults. Although the CAT-Q has been used with adolescents (, ), its appropriateness for younger children is questioned (, ). Masking has been measured in autistic children and adolescents through observation () and through discrepancy measures, which compare autistic presentation either between different informants (–), or between internal and external expressions (, ). However, we are not aware of any self-report or informant-report tools to measure masking in autistic children. One reason for this may be that there is relatively limited previous research into masking in childhood, before adolescence. The vast majority of research has taken place within adult populations (); although some studies involved asking autistic adults about their experiences in childhood, it cannot be assumed that adult experiences can generalise to childhood (, ). Research into masking in autistic adolescents suggests that there are some similarities in masking experiences between adolescents and adults, such as feeling drained and tired after masking (). However, qualitative research suggests that the relationship between masking and mental health may be more complex for autistic adolescents (), and that it may be hard to distinguish between masking of autism and that of other characteristics, such as ADHD (, ).