The Role of Parental Synchrony in the Language Abilities of Children with and without ASD

Background:  Research suggests that up to 50% of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have language impairments (Ganz, Lashley, & Rispoli, 2010). Parents play a critical role in the development of early language acquisition (Kamphaus, 1987; Mahoney, Kim, & Lin, 2007). Specifically, children with ASD whose parents demonstrated greater synchronous behaviors during a free play task had greater language gains longitudinally compared to parents with less synchrony (Siller & Sigman, 2002). These results have yet to be replicated using a typically developing (TD) control group.

Objectives:  The aim of this study was to examine the moderating role of parental synchrony on the association between developmental status (ASD vs. TD) and verbal abilities.

Methods:  Our sample consisted of 64 children, ages 3:0 to 6:11, and their parents. Thirty children were previously diagnosed with ASD and 30 children were TD.  Parent-child dyads completed an eight-minute free-play task in a laboratory setting that was recorded for future coding. Parental synchrony was coded during the free-play task using a modification of Siller, Hutman, and Sigman’s (2013) coding system. The DAS-II(Elliott, 2007) was also used to assess children’s expressive and receptive language abilities.

Results:  A multiple regression analysis was conducted using the SPSS macro add-on PROCESS (Hayes, 2008) to examine the moderating effect of parental synchrony on the association between developmental status and children's verbal abilities. Controlled variables included children's gender, age, and total number of parental phrases spoken. A significant main effect of status (B = -32.28, SE = 12.09, p = .01) and an insignificant main effect of parental synchrony (B = -.16, SE = .10 p = .15) on verbal abilities were detected. The interaction between status and parental synchrony was a significant predictor of verbal ability (B = .28, SE = .13 p = .03, ΔR² = .06). When examining the significant interaction at the 10^th, 25^th, 50^th, 75^th, and 90^th percentiles, the conditional effect of status on verbal ability scores were significant at the 10^th (B = -15.96, SE = 5.54, p = .006) and 25^th (B = -12.75, SE = 4.54, p = .007) percentiles and insignificant at the 50th, 75th, and 90th percentiles. This indicates children with ASD whose parents used mean and high levels of parental synchrony may have comparable verbal abilities to their TD peers.

Conclusions: Our findings support our hypothesis that parental synchrony moderates the relation between developmental status and language abilities in children with ASD when compared to TD children. Children with ASD who experienced mean and high levels of parental synchrony did not have verbal abilities that were significantly different from their TD peers. In contrast, children with ASD whose parents engaged in low levels of synchronous behavior had significantly lower verbal abilities than TD children. These results suggest that moderate to high levels of parental synchrony potentially buffer against language deficits in children with ASD. This supports previous literature suggesting responsive parenting practices contribute to the acquisition of language during early childhood.