Increasing Parent-Child Social Interactions in Preschoolers with and without ASD through Song Books

Background: Providing natural opportunities that scaffold interpersonal engagement is important for supporting social interactions for children with ASD. Shared musical activities may be an effective way to foster such interactions. For example, children with ASD showed increased eye gaze and turn-taking with a therapist when engaged in music therapy versus play therapy (Kim et al., 2008). However, less is known about whether musical contexts support parent-child interactions. Beyond focusing only on children, musical activities may be helpful in supporting parents’ behavior during parent-child interactions because music is a natural, familiar, and predictable activity. We use a dyadic book sharing activity to examine the impact of music and song on parents’ and children’s interpersonal engagement.

Objectives: Examine interpersonal engagement (visual attention and movement coordination) in parent-child dyads during picture book versus song book interactions.

Methods: Nine children with ASD (7 male, M=3.56 years) and twelve typically developing (TD) children (8 male, M=2.92 years) were video recorded during a 5-minute picture book and a 5-minute song book activity with their parents. Parents’ and children’s visual attention were manually coded using a five-second partial interval coding schema (Klimenko, 2007) that assessed attention to the book and/or gaze toward the partner. Wilcoxon paired sign-rank tests compared child and parent mean visual attention scores during the picture book and song book activities. Movement profiles were extracted from one-minute video clips of the same activities using a frame-difference-method. Granger causality analyses were used to examine interpersonal coordination.

Results: Across all dyads, children demonstrated greater sustained attention to the song books than to the picture books (W=27, p=0.007). Children with ASD showed marginally greater sustained attention during the song books (W=5, p=.08), while TD children demonstrated significantly greater sustained attention to song books (W=9, p=0.037), though the magnitude of the effect was small. Overall, parents showed greater gaze toward their child during the song books than during the picture books (W=12, p=0.0001), which was also evident in parents of only the TD children (W=5, p=0.005) and ASD children (W=2, p=.02). Movement analyses indicated that children Granger-caused parent movement activity more during the song books than the picture books (p<.05), suggesting greater parent responsiveness during the song books.

Conclusions: Song books, as compared to picture books, appeared to create a context that scaffolded parent-child engagement. Children increased sustained attention to the books and parents increased eye gaze toward their children during song book versus picture book activities. The parents’ increased gaze to their child during the song book activity may have impacted their movement coordination with their child, as parents’ movements were more responsive to their children’s movements in this context. Song activities may be an accessible activity that support parent-child engagement due to their familiarity and predictability. Further analyses with an expanded sample size will compare behavior before and after participation in a ten-week parent-child music class involving music-based parent training for social engagement.