IMFAR Conference in Atlanta – Highlights and My Favorites

Objectives: This study examined the association between joint engagement and child language abilities within therapist-child interactions with minimally verbal children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders.

Methods: Participants were selected from the large multi-site study, Characterizing Cognition in Nonverbal Individuals with ASD. All children used fewer than twenty spontaneous, functional words during a language sample, and had received at least two years of prior intervention. Videotaped baseline intervention sessions were coded for 61 children between the ages of 5 and 8 years. Episodes of joint engagement were defined as time a child and therapist coordinated their involvement around an object or activity. The mean length of joint engagement was used from the first intervention session. Child language abilities were: (1) total social communicative utterances (TSCU), which excluded all scripted utterances; (2) number of different word roots (NDWR), which represented the variety of novel words; (3) total number of comments (TCOM), defined as utterances used for the function of sharing information, or describing an action or object in their attentional focus. The language variables were averaged over the first two sessions to gain a more accurate representation of abilities from this minimally verbal population.

Results: The Spearman’s rho revealed a statistically significant relationship between the mean length of joint engagement and TSCU (rs = 0.261, p < 0.05) and TCOM (rs = 0.309, p< 0.05). However, mean length of joint engagement was not significantly correlated with the NDWR.

Conclusions: Language abilities are a key target for minimally verbal children with autism spectrum disorders. Results demonstrate that joint engagement is associated with social communication and commenting language. Joint engagement between a child and a therapist may be a critical factor to facilitate social language development of minimally verbal children.

According to best practice guidelines for treating children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), including and training parents to assist their child’s communication development is considered an essential component and a natural step to provide consistent, daily support in early childhood. Research suggests that parents can learn to be effective language facilitators; however, we know very little about the cultural differences, including beliefs and practices, of parents of children with ASD. In fact, the sporadic observations of non-Western cultural groups have made it clear that the large literature on language facilitation strategies primarily describes Western parent-child interaction patterns.  

Objectives:  

The aim of the present study was to 1) review the literature on early parent-child interaction across cultures for typically developing children and for children with ASD. This review served as the basis of a questionnaire that was developed 2) to better understand parents’ beliefs about child rearing and ‘how to talk to children’ to promote language development in four cultural groups of parents of children with ASD: South Koreans, South Indians, Euro-Canadians, and Indo-Canadians.

Methods:  

Items in the questionnaire were designed in consultation child language scholars, speech and language pathologists, health care workers from both Korea, Indian, and Western cultural groups and addressed: independence of child’s learning, nature of language learning, and early language milestones, beliefs about disability, and parenting. The questionnaire was administered to 128 South Korean, 71 Indian families of children with ASD and contrasted with 65 Euro-Canadian and Indo-Canadian families of children with ASD.

Results:  

Differences across the four cultural groups were found in aspects of socialization, the value of talk, beliefs about disability, the way status is handled in interaction, and understanding about teaching language to children.

Conclusions:  

Interpretation of the findings was made by attempting to understand the cultures and their implied values and beliefs. Family functioning has a huge impact on the effectiveness of interventions and so too do their cultures. The beliefs and values that inform family functioning influence the creation of each child’s unique ‘developmental niche;’  thus better understanding of culture may helps us to design interventions that are applicable to families of diverse cultural back grounds.