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Understanding the Parental Interactive Behaviours of at-Risk Infants: What We Have Learned from Basis and Ibasis
Objectives: Synthesising our parent-infant interaction data from the British Autism Study of Infant Siblings (BASIS) and our early parenting intervention trial (iBASIS), we attempt to address: (1) What aspects of parental interaction are positive in parents of at-risk infants? (2) How might parents adapt to their high risk child and can this have positive and/or negative consequences for development?
Methods: The validated global Manchester Assessment of Caregiver-Infant Interaction (MACI) was used to evaluate seven areas of interaction at 7 and 13 months in infants at familial risk of ASD compared with typically developing controls, as well as our parent-mediated intervention, iBASIS. We also explored a subsample of videotaped interactions taken during home intervention sessions at 5 time points using the MACI.
Results: Overall parental sensitivity remained relatively intact; in particular, those parents of at-risk infants who did not go on to develop ASD showed similar degrees of sensitivity at 13 months. However, low-sensitive parents who participated in a parent-mediated (modified VIPP) intervention, on average, showed a time course of steady improvement in their sensitive responding through the programme, which was partially reflected in the post-intervention lab assessment. Parental directiveness, however, was higher in at-risk infants than in typically developing infants from 7 months, but the lack of mutuality effect at 7 months which is then apparent at 13 months, may suggest that this directiveness is an adaptive strategy that may 'work' in the short-term, but may be unhelpful to the infant in the longer term. The parent-mediated intervention reduced parent directiveness and slightly improved infant affect, which were highly correlated in the intervention arm and not among controls.
Conclusions: Combining our published results with new analysis as well as recent data from iBASIS lab and home visit observations, a complex picture is emerging of the interactive behavioural tendencies of parents with at-risk infants, how they may impact both positively and negatively to infant development, and how they may respond to a modified parenting intervention. The findings provide a number of discussion points, such as the possible impact of parental behaviours on infant affective tendencies and language development.
See more of: Early Development (< 48 months)