Fathers' and Mothers' Responsiveness and Broad Autism Phenotype Characteristics and the Language Skills of Children with ASD

Background:   Given that parent verbal responsiveness is strong predictor of later language outcomes for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), increasing parent responsiveness is a popular target of communication intervention for young children with ASD. However results of interventions to improve communication skills via increasing parent responsiveness have been mixed. Some communication interventions have been unsuccessful in improving either parent responsiveness or child communication skills, others have shown effects in increasing both parent responsiveness and child communication outcomes, whereas other interventions have been shown to improve parent responsiveness but not child communication skills. One proposed explanation for differences in treatment effect for parent-implemented social communication interventions is pre-treatment child characteristics (e.g., baseline cognitive, joint attention, imitation, communication skills). A less explored explanation for differences in treatment effect of parent-implemented social communication intervention may be parental pre-treatment characteristics.  Compared to both parents of children who are typically developing and parents of children with other developmental disorders, parents of children with ASD are more likely to present with milder variants of the characteristics associated with ASD, known as the broad autism phenotype (BAP). Parents who demonstrate BAP characteristics with resulting difficulties in social and communication skills, may need more tailored supports to effectively deliver parent-implemented social communication interventions. 

Objectives:   This observational study examined the interactions of 16 young children with ASD and their mothers and fathers in order to investigate concurrent associations between parental verbal responsiveness and three characteristics of the parental broad autism phenotype (i.e., aloofness, rigidity, pragmatic language deficits), and child language skills.

Methods:   Child language skills were assessed by the Preschool Language Scale- 4 (Zimmerman, Steiner & Pond, 2002). Parental BAP characteristics were measured with Broad Autism Phenotypes Questionnaire BAPQ (Hurley, Losh, Parlier, Reznick & Piven, 2006).  Parent verbal responsiveness was coded from video recordings of naturalistic parent-child play sessions using interval-based coding. 

Results:   Fathers’ BAPQ scores were not related to child language skills. Concurrent negative associations were found between child language skills and mothers’ scores on two subscales of the BAPQ, (i.e., Aloof and Rigid). After accounting for maternal verbal responsiveness, mothers’ scores on the Aloof subscale were no longer negatively associated with child language scores; negative associations between child language skills and mothers’ scores on the Rigid subscale remained significant after controlling for maternal verbal responsiveness.

Conclusions:  In this study, negative concurrent associations were found between child language skills and maternal scores on two BAPQ subscales (i.e., Aloof and Rigid). However, after controlling for maternal verbal responsiveness associations between aloof characteristics and child language skills were no longer significant, whereas negative concurrent correlations between Rigid Subscale scores and child language remained significant. These data warrant the investigation of pre-treatment parental characteristics in future observational research and research of parent-implemented social communication intervention for children with ASD.