Caregiver Responsiveness and Social Interaction Behaviors of Young Children With Autism

Abstract

Although it is documented that parent interaction influences children's development, few studies have focused on methods for reliably assessing molar-level caregiver-child interactions that are used regularly in treatment evaluations in communitybased settings, and none have targeted children with autism spectrum disorders. Thirty-five children and their caregivers participated in an outpatient evaluation for therapeutic treatment planning for children with autism spectrum disorders. Parent-child interactions (part of the routine evaluation) were coded immediately after a 10-minute free-play activity. Analyses indicated that molar-level caregiver interaction behaviors could be evaluated with good reliability. Correlational analysis of parent and child demographics with the quality of interactions revealed no significant relationships, consistent with previous research. However, an expected and significant concurrent association was observed between parent responsiveness, measured using the observational rating scale, and parents' reports of children's ability to initiate interactions with adults. Research on reliable, ecologically feasible methods of parent-child interaction assessment conducted in communitybased settings may help translate evidence-based practices into real-world settings.

Interactions Between Turkish Mothers and Preschool Children With Autism

“…Results supported our bypotbesis tbat cbildren's engagement was positively associated witb tbeir motbers' responsiveness. Wbile tbese results do not refute tbe possibility tbat tbis resulted from more-engaged cbildren eliciting bigber levels of responsiveness from tbeir motbers, tbey are nonetbeless consistent witb results from tbe descriptive study reported by Ruble et al (2008) as well as findings from developmental interventions wbicb reported tbat increases in parental responsiveness were causally related to increases in cbildren's engagement for cbildren witb general disabilities including autism (Kim & Maboney, 2005;Maboney & Perales, 2005).…”

“…Wbile parents of cbildren witb autism used a bigber frequency of bebavioral-regulation strategies tban parents of typically developing cbildren, directiveness was not associated witb tbe quality of cbildren's social interaction witb tbeir parents. Ruble et al (2008) assessed tbe interactive bebavior of parents of prescbool-aged cbildren along six global dimensions. As in tbe work of Adamson et al (2004), parental directiveness was not associated witb tbe level of cbildren's social initiation, wbile parental responsiveness was.…”

Teacher and Child Predictors of Achieving IEP Goals of Children with Autism

“…It assesses the overall global quality of the child's interaction with a targeted adult along six dimensions of child behavior during an activity: (a) cooperation; (b) functional use of objects; (c) productivity; (d) independence; (e) consistency between the child's and the teacher's goals; and (f) attention to the activity. Items are rated using a 5-point, Likert scale ranging from 1 to 3, with −0.5 midpoints and complements the Social Interaction Rating Scale, described below (SIRS; Ruble et al 2008). The items are summed to provide a total score.…”

Increasing Responsive Parent–Child Interactions and Joint Engagement: Comparing the Influence of Parent-Mediated Intervention and Parent Psychoeducation

“…Responsive interactions also predict language gain scores 3 years later for children with ASD (Haebig et al 2013) and 6 years later for children with Fragile X (Brady et al 2014). Further, parental responsivity has also been associated with the amount of time children spend jointly engaged, a state of engagement where children coordinate attention between a shared activity and their interaction partner (Patterson et al 2014; Ruble et al 2008). In children with ASD, joint engagement has been linked to gains in spoken language (Kasari et al 2008).…”