Parent-Child Interaction and Child Behavior: Children with and without Autism

Background:  

Parent-child interactions are an essential feature of early childhood development.  For typically developing children, positive parenting behaviors such as scaffolding are linked to the emergence of child emotion and behavioral regulation (Hoffman, Crnic, & Baker, 2006).  In the current study, we examined parental attention cues during a parent-child reading task with children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and typically developing (TD) children.  We first hypothesized that parents of children with ASD would provide more attention cues compared to parents of typically developing children.  Our second hypothesis predicted that children with ASD would have higher parent-rated behavioral problems, and lower parent-rated adaptive skills.  We also investigated links between supportive parenting behaviors such as scaffolding and children’s current adaptive skills and behavior problems in both children with ASD and TD. 

Objectives:

The primary goal of this study is to determine how parental attention cues, both verbal and non-verbal, relate to child behavior for children with and without ASD.   

Methods:  

Using preliminary data from a larger study investigating self-regulation skills in children with ASD, we examined parental attention cues directed towards children during a reading task.  Participants included 36 children, 3:0 to 6:11 years old.  Eighteen participants had an ASD diagnosis, and the remaining 18 were typically developing children.  Participants were matched on mental age based on verbal scores from the Differential Ability Scale – Version II (DAS-II; Elliott, 2007).  Parents and children completed a 5-minute wordless picture book-reading task in a laboratory setting, which was videotaped for future coding.  Parental responses were coded for verbal, nonverbal, and simultaneous (verbal and nonverbal combined) attention cues.  Parents also completed The Behavioral Assessment System for Children – Second Edition (BASC-2; Reynolds & Kamphaus, 2004), a rating scale for child adaptive and problem behaviors.  

Results:  

Parents of children with ASD used significantly more simultaneous attention cues than those of typically developing children F(1, 34) = 4.11, p = .05, n² = .11.  Children with ASD had significantly higher parent ratings of behavioral problems than their typically developing peers, F(1, 34) = 35.07, p < .001, n² = .51, and significantly lower parent ratings of adaptive skills F(1, 34) = 56.07, p, < .001, n² = .62.  Also, simultaneous parent attention cues predicted higher levels of inattention problems (B = 0.38, p = .22, R² = .14) and lower levels of adaptive skills (B = -0.41, p = .012, R² = .17).

Conclusions:  

Our first hypothesis that parents of children with ASD would provide more attention cues compared to parents of typically developing children was supported.  Our second hypothesis was also supported as we found that children with ASD had higher ratings of behavior problem and lower ratings of adaptive behavior.  We also found that higher amounts of parental attention cues during the book-reading task predicted lower parent-rated adaptive skills and higher parent rated behavioral problems. More specific group differences as well as implications and limitations will be further discussed.