Compassion Meditation in Parents of Children with ASD and Potential Effects on Stress, Parenting Skills and Children's Outcomes

Background:

Recent studies suggest that the practice of compassion meditation is associated with stress reduction as well as an increase in the ability to benefit from social support (Cosley et al, 2010). Cognitively-Based Compassion Training (CBCT) is a meditation protocol developed at Emory University that combines mindfulness and analytical meditation techniques that specifically promote compassion toward self and others. Six to eight weeks of CBCT practice on adults without prior experience in meditation shows reduced immune inflammatory and emotional distress responses to psychosocial stressors (Pace et al., 2009) as well as enhancement of empathic accuracy when assigning emotions to other people’s faces with changes in the neurobiology supporting it (Mascaro et al., 2013).

Objectives:

The goal of this research is to pilot-test CBCT with typically developing school-aged children, teachers, and parents of children with ASD to promote relational competence in these populations, enhance adult-child interactions, and reduce stress in the parents.

Methods:

Participants in Study I included 53 children (7-10 years, M±SD = 8.77±0.61, 30 girls) at a private school in Atlanta, GA. Participants were randomized to mindfulness training and CBCT over the course of 12 weeks and completed three pre-post measures: the Implicit Association Task as a measure of racial stereotype, the Social Circles Task for friendship networks, and the MacArthur Story Stem Task for moral reasoning. An on-going follow-up study at a second elementary school aims to replicate and expand these findings by involving teacher personnel.  In a third ongoing study at the Marcus Autism Center data is being collected on parents of children with autism (n=10). Pre-post measures are being taken on parent stress and acceptance (Parenting Stress Index, Perceived Stress Scale, and Acceptance and Action Questionnaire), empathy and compassion (Interpersonal Reactivity Index), behavioral flexibility (Mindful Attention Awareness Scale and Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function), parent-child relationship (Parenting Sense of Competence Scale), and children’s symptoms as reported by parents (Aberrant Behavior Checklist).

Results:

In Study I, the proportion of children that included at least one peer in their inner Social Circle was larger post-intervention (92.6%) than pre-intervention  (55.6%) for the CBCT group only (Fisher’s p=.004, two-tailed). In the MacArthur Story Stem Task, post-intervention overall narrative scores were also higher for CBCT (M±SE= 6.09±.437) relative to mindfulness (M±SE = 4.33±.464) (p=.008) and also in the following subscales: emotionality, compassion, equanimity, and mentalizing (p<.05). Data from Study II, while ongoing, are already suggestive of positive effects of CBCT on prosocial behavior, stereotype, and bullying. Early descriptive and qualitative analyses of results from Study III, also ongoing, show a positive effect of CBCT on parent well-being, parent-child interactions, and parent reported symptoms in their children.

Conclusions:  

Taken together, these results suggest that CBCT is a feasible training program for children, teachers, and parents of children with special needs, with benefits for the children regarding prosocial behavior. The potential benefits for teachers and parents in terms of relational competence (prosocial behavior, stress reduction and parenting skills), and the impact of these on the children, warrant further consideration.