This study shows that autistic kids’ bodies do signal anxiety—but in a distinct way compared to non‑autistic kids.

Researchers measured heart rate, skin sweat (electrodermal activity), and skin temperature while children watched a calm movie and did a stressful Stroop task. In both autistic and non‑autistic children, anxiety made heart rate and sweat response go up, confirming that physiology reflects anxiety in autism too.

But autistic children had a different “stress profile”:

• Higher heart rate even at rest (a “high‑idle” nervous system)

• More frequent small sweat responses at baseline, but a blunted sweat response to the anxiety task

• No typical drop in skin temperature during anxiety

In short, autistic children showed signs of chronic over‑arousal plus less flexible bodily responses to stress. That’s exactly why wearable, physiology‑based tools can be so powerful: they can track these subtle bodily shifts and help flag anxiety even when a child can’t easily say, “I’m anxious right now.”