Mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder show more demonstrative and directive and less imitative and playful behavior with their children
International Journal of Development Research
Mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder show more demonstrative and directive and less imitative and playful behavior with their children
Received 25th August, 2019; Received in revised form 20th September, 2019; Accepted 10th October, 2019; Published online 30th November, 2019
Copyright © 2019, Ava Grace et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
In this study, videotapes of play interactions were coded for the behaviors of 4- to 6-year-old nonverbal children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD)(i.e., looking at the adult, initiating, imitating, and being playful) and their mothers’ and an imitative examiner’s behaviors (i.e. demonstrating, directing, imitating and being playful).ANOVAs revealed that the mothers spent more time demonstrating and directing versus the experimenter who spent more time being playful and imitating the child. The children spent more time looking at their mothers and more time imitating the experimenter. Positive correlations were noted between the adult demonstrating and the child looking, and the adult imitating and the child imitating. Negative correlations were noted between the adult demonstrating and the child imitating, and the adult imitating and the child looking at the adult. These results are consistent with previous research on the enhancing effects of adult imitation on the imitation behavior of children with ASD.
