Early interventions practices in ASD – Maternal behavior in spontaneous interaction with their children

Abstract

Recent studies point out that the occurrence of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) is up to 1%. In Brazil, providing services of medical diagnosis for children with ASD takes precious time. The time spent waiting for the conclusion of the diagnostic process would be extremely important to the child's development. In this context, the parent–children interaction is an important aspect to be considered as a factor that has a positive impact in this process. The aim of this study was to explore maternal behavior during a spontaneous play situation with their children. All subjects were filmed for 30 minutes during a spontaneous play situation with their mothers that did not receive any special instructions. The subjects were 30 normal children, 3 of each age (respectively 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27, 30, 33 and 36 months) and 20 autistic children with ages varying from 2:10 to 10:6 (not expected any chronological association). The whole corpus was analyzed considering of each subject, of each group and the possible associations between the groups. The analysis of the maternal behavior provides data about the importance of mother–child interaction and how everyday life activities and routines can be used to increase the opportunities to improve the ASD child's communicative abilities and their creative use as an important part of the whole development. These findings provide further evidence that families should be included in any plan for intervention designed towards ASD children.

Disclosure of interest

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.