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Changes in the Communicative Style of Mothers of Toddlers with ASD Are a Response to the Relatively Low Frequency of Communication in Their Children from 2 to 3 Years of Age
The British Autism Study of Infant Siblings (BASIS) is a prospective study of children with older siblings with ASD (High-Risk sibs: HR) and controls with older siblings and no history of autism in first degree relatives (Low-Risk sibs: LR). Participants are assessed at various time points from infancy until approximately 36 months of age. At each visit parents are observed playing with their child in an unstructured session.
Objectives:
To investigate the concurrent and longitudinal relationships between parents’ communication style and the frequency of their toddler’s expressive language in the context of a dyadic play-based interaction within a prospective study of children at risk for ASD.
Methods:
Mothers and their children were observed playing together in an ecologically valid unstructured session when the children were 2 and 3 years of age. The frequency, content and intention of parent and child communicative acts were coded from videos of these sessions. Following the 3-year visit a best estimate research diagnosis was made. Outcome categories are: Low risk controls (LR, n=19), Typically developing (HR-TD, n=40), ASD (HR-ASD, n=10) and Atypical (HR-ATYP, n=19). The latter group consists of children not diagnosed with ASD but meeting ADOS-2 and/or ADI-R ASD criteria and/or being below -1.5 SD on the Mullen Scales of Early Learning.
Results:
Eighty-eight mother-child dyads were observed at both 2- and 3-year visits. The proportion of mothers’ communicative acts that were responsive to their children’s communication and the overall frequency of children’s communicative acts were calculated. Repeated measures ANOVAs were conducted for both variables. For parent communication there was an overall reduction in the proportion of responsive acts over time (F(1,5.18), p=0.025, η2=0.058), but no interaction with group. There was a significant difference between groups (F(3,4.36), p=0.007, η2=0.135): Post-hoc analysis showed that HR-ASD was lower than both the LR and HR-TD groups at the 3-year visit (p=.023 and .022, respectively). For children’s communication there was an overall increase in expressive communicative acts (F(1,40.65), p<0.001, η2=0.326) over time but no interaction with group. There was a between-group difference (F(3,10.44), p<.001, η2=0.272), with frequency of child communication in the HR-ASD group being significantly lower than all other groups at both time points (all p<.005).
Conclusions:
Both children and their mothers showed a similar pattern of changes in communication across all groups between 2 and 3 years of age. Mothers typically shifted to a less responsive, style and their children communicated more frequently. However, the relatively more directive style of communication in the mothers of children with ASD, compared to those of typically developing children, appears to follow the persistent lower frequency of communication used by their children. This may have implications for the type of support and intervention provided for parents of young children with autism.