Identifying early intervention targets for children with autism in inclusive school settings

This study assessed play and social behavior of young children with autism in inclusive school settings to identify important targets for intervention. Data were collected for five children with autism and for typically developing peers. All children with autism received intervention in one-on-one settings but did not have individual education plan goals that provided systematic intervention for developing play and social skills in their school settings. Results indicated the children with autism and their typically developing peers played with a comparable number of stimulus items (e.g., toys), but the children with autism engaged in these activities for shorter durations. Both children with autism and their typically developing peers engaged in similar levels of social interaction with adults. However, the children with autism rarely or never engaged in social interactions with their peers, whereas the typically developing peers frequently engaged in social interactions with other children. The results suggest important targets for intervention.     

Linking Parental Perceptions to Interactions in Young Children with Autism

This study examines the relation of parental perceptions and observed parent–child interactive behaviors. Samples observed included normally developing children, children with autism, and children with mental retardation who were equivalent on mental age. Parental perceptions of children's temperament and parental feelings of parenting stress were examined. Results indicated that parental perceptions of autistic children's behavior were more often linked to actual child and parental behaviors than in the comparison samples. Parents who reported their autistic children as more difficult in temperamental style had children who were less engaged during a social game with the parent and less responsive in interaction with an experimenter. Parents who reported greater stress had autistic children who were less responsive in social interactions with others.     

Friendship in High-functioning Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Mixed and Non-mixed Dyads

Friendships containing a child with autism and a friend with typical development ("mixed" friendships, n = 26) and those of children with autism and a friend with a disability ("non-mixed," n = 16) were contrasted with friendships of typically developing subjects and their friends (n = 31). Measures included dyadic interaction samples, and interview and questionnaire data from subjects, friends, and parents. Mixed friendship interactions resembled typical friendships. Participants in mixed friendships were more responsive to one another, had stronger receptive language skills, exhibited greater positive social orientation and cohesion, and demonstrated more complex coordinated play than in the non-mixed dyads. Exposure to typical peers appears to have significant effects on friendship behaviors.     

Autism and externalizing behaviors: Buffering effects of parental emotion coaching

The purpose of this study was to examine the relation between parental emotion coaching and externalizing behaviors in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Children with ASD often exhibit externalizing behaviors, particularly emotionally driven externalizing behaviors, at a higher rate than their typically developing peers. An examination of parental emotion coaching as a possible protective factor may inform future interventions. Participants included 66 children (44 typically developing and 22 with ASD), ages 3:0 to 6:11, who were matched on verbal mental age, and their parents. Parental emotion coaching and emotionally driven externalizing behaviors were coded individually based on audiotaped responses from parents who completed the Meta-Emotion Interview. Parents also reported on child externalizing behaviors using the Behavioral Assessment System for Children, Second Edition (BASC-2). ASD status predicted more parent-reported total externalizing behaviors on the BASC-2. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that parental emotion coaching moderated the relation between ASD status and emotionally driven externalizing behaviors, such that children with ASD whose parents provided high emotion coaching reported significantly fewer emotionally driven externalizing behaviors than children with ASD whose parents provided low emotion coaching. These findings suggest parental emotion coaching buffers the effects of ASD status on externalizing behaviors, and thus may be a potential area for intervention.     

Teaching typically developing children to promote social play with their siblings with autism

Siblings are important “peers” for children. Unfortunately, children with autism often do not play or interact often with their typically developing siblings. The purpose of this study was to teach three typically developing children (ages 4-6) skills that were likely to increase the amount and quality of social play interactions with their brothers who have autism. A teacher used the teaching interaction procedure to teach typically developing children to provide clear instructions and prompt and reinforce appropriate play behavior such as joining into a play activity, sharing toys, and engaging in appropriate toy play. All three typically developing children learned the targeted skills during role-plays with a teacher and, to a large part, generalized the skills when they played with their brothers with autism. In addition, some children who learned these skills increased their positive interactions and decreased negative interactions during a free-play period with their sibling with autism.     

Multirater Congruence on the Social Skills Assessment of Children with Asperger Syndrome: Self,Mother, Father,and Teacher Ratings

Children with Asperger Syndrome (AS) who attend mainstream settings face social skills deficits that have not been adequately explored. This study aims to examine social skills through self-reports of children with AS (N = 21) and a matched group of typically developing peers, as well as reports from their mothers, fathers, and teachers. Results showed that children with AS had more social skills deficits according to all raters and that they reported more aggressiveness/antisocial behavior, more conceit/haughtiness, more loneliness/social anxiety, and less assertiveness than controls. The level of agreement between raters varied significantly, suggesting that social skills are best studied with multiple informants.     

Psychopathological symptoms associated with psychosocial functioning in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders and their typically developing peers

Children and adolescents with autism have increased prevalence of psychosocial disabilities. Studies in autism indicate that key psychosocial factors including adaptive functioning, school absence, special needs education, frequency of peer socialization and participation in organized leisure activities may differ in their relationship with autistic, internalizing and externalizing symptoms, but the findings are so far mixed. Therefore, we examined if these measures of psychosocial functioning displayed specific associations with autistic, internalizing and/or externalizing symptoms in 61 children with autism aged 7–14 years compared to 61 typically developing controls. Multiple linear regression analyses across all participants showed that lower adaptive functioning, frequency of peer socialization and participation in leisure activities were driven by more social communication problems and not internalizing, externalizing or autistic-like symptoms including rigidity, stereotypy and sensory sensitivity. Notably, increased school absence was specifically driven by more internalizing symptoms and not autistic or externalizing symptoms. These associations were observed across all participants, both children with autism and their typically developing peers, and therefore appear to be dimensional and general in nature. Within the autism group, children who received special needs education displayed fewer social communication problems compared to those who attended regular education, while a developmental history of social interaction problems was related to lower adaptive functioning. Our findings suggest that social communication problems are more critical for psychosocial functioning than other autistic-like behaviors, internalizing or externalizing symptoms but that efforts to reduce school absence specifically need to target internalizing symptoms and not autistic-like or externalizing symptoms.     

Cortisol Responsivity Differences in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders During Free and Cooperative Play

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) demonstrate significant heterogeneity in their profiles of social interaction and stress responsivity. We evaluated behavior and stress response in 52 male children ages 8–12 in a naturalistic playground interaction paradigm involving a child with ASD, a typically developing peer, and a same-age confederate. Younger children in the ASD group engaged in 5.8 times more approach behavior and showed a lower cortisol response than their older peers. Those that verbally initiated with their peers also showed a higher cortisol response. Older children with ASD exhibited the highest stress responsivity, while younger children with ASD showed more willingness to approach others without apparent stress. Intervening early and often may contribute to improvements in social engagement in youth with ASD.     

Following the Child's Lead: Mothers' Interactions with Children with Autism

This study examined the extent to which mothers of preschool children with autism use language that is related to the child's focus of attention. Fourteen mother–child dyads involving preschool children with autism participated in this study, along with 14 matched dyads involving typically developing preschool children. Both groups were observed during 15 minutes of free play. Results revealed that the mothers of children with autism directed verbalizations to something within the child's focus of attention as frequently as the mothers of typically developing children. Thus, children with autism had as many opportunities to benefit from verbal input related to their focus of attention as did typically developing children. However, mothers of children with autism directed verbalizations to something not within the child's focus of attention more frequently than mothers of typically developing children. This non-related input may have reflected the mothers' attempts to adapt to their children's difficulties in attention and interaction.     

Links Between Social Understanding and Social Behavior in Verbally Able Children with Autism

This study investigated the relations between various measures of social understanding and social interaction competence in verbally able children with autism. Measures of social understanding included measures of verbalizable knowledge (false belief understanding, affective perspective taking), as well as measures of more intuitive forms of social responsiveness (empathy, concern to distress, and initiating joint attention). Two measures of social interaction competence were employed: level of engagement with peers on the playground, and prosocial behavior in a structured laboratory task. For children with autism, initiating joint attention and empathy were strongly related to both measures of social interaction competence. No understanding-behavior links were identified for a language-age matched comparison sample of developmentally delayed children. Several accounts of these understanding-behavior links are considered, including the possibility that for children with autism, more impaired forms of understanding are more closely linked to behavior because they serve as limits on competence.