Many everyday activities require us to organise our behaviours with respect to time. There is some evidence that autistic children have problems with how they perceive and understand time. However, little is currently known about this, or the ways in which behaviours related to time are impacted in daily life. In this study, 113 parents of autistic children and 201 parents of neurotypical children completed a questionnaire and open-ended questions about their child's behaviour relating to time. Questionnaire scores were lower in the autistic group compared with neurotypicals, which suggests that behaviours relating to time are affected in autistic children. The open-ended responses further confirmed that the autistic children struggled with time and that this impacted on them and their family. Three key themes were identified. Theme 1: autistic children have problems with learning about concepts relating to time such as telling the time from a clock and using words to describe time (hours, minutes, etc.) appropriately. Theme 2: autistic children think about the future differently. Planning and working under time pressure were described as a problem. Theme 3: autistic children have strong interests which take up a lot of their attention and worrying about having sufficient time to pursue these interests causes anxiety. This research indicates that behaviours related to time can have a considerable impact on the lives of autistic children and that targeted support may be required.
Keywords: autism; questionnaire; temporal cognition; thematic analysis; time perception.