21057
Fathers' and Mothers' Responsiveness and Broad Autism Phenotype Characteristics and the Language Skills of Children with ASD
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.