The Effect of Parenting Style on Social Smiling in Infants at High and Low Risk for ASD

Abstract

This study examined how parenting style at 9 months predicts growth in infant social engagement (i.e., social smiling) between 9 and 18 months during a free-play interaction in infants at high (HR-infants) and low (LR-infants) familial risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Results indicated that across all infants, higher levels of maternal responsiveness were concurrently associated with higher levels of social smiling, while higher levels of maternal directiveness predicted slower growth in social smiling. When accounting for maternal directiveness, which was higher in mothers of HR-infants, HR-infants exhibited greater growth in social smiling than LR-infants. Overall, each parenting style appears to make a unique contribution to the development of social engagement in infants at high- and low-risk for ASD.

Annual Research Review: The state of autism intervention science: progress, target psychological and biological mechanisms and future prospects

“…Alongside this, autism developmental science has identified variations from such normative patterns in young children at risk of or diagnosed with the condition. Thus increased parent directiveness (but not reduced responsiveness) is found in the latter part of the first year in infant siblings at risk of autism (Harker, Ibanez, Nguyen, Messinger, & Stone, ; Wan et al., ) along with reduced child attentiveness to parent, affective signalling and coordinated dyadic communication (Parlade & Iverson, ; Wan et al., ). Similar patterns are seen in established autism as well as in other developmental disabilities (Blacher, Baker, & Kaladjian, ; Doussard‐Roosevelt, Joe, Bazhenova, & Porges, ).…”

Conceptualisation of parenting in research on young children with or at elevated likelihood of autism: A systematic review of observational measures

“…The importance of early environmental experiences, such as parenting, is now more and more acknowledged in research on emergent autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Parenting is widely viewed as a bidirectional process, in which parent and child reciprocally influence each other (Pettit & Lollis, 1997), and several studies have been following young children and their families over an extended period of time in order to gain more understanding in how parenting and child characteristics influence each other, and how this leads to different developmental trajectories (e.g., Campbell et al, 2015Campbell et al, , 2018Harker et al, 2016;Siller & Sigman, 2002, 2008Wan et al, 2012Wan et al, , 2013Watson et al, 2017;Yirmiya et al, 2006). These studies generally follow children from birth into toddlerhood and pre-school age, to fully capture the development of bidirectional parent-child interactions as well as the early development of parenting behaviour.…”

“…Due to the inaccurate historical notion of "refrigerator mums", blaming cold and distant parents for their child's autism, research into the relationship between parenting and the development of ASD has been limited for many decades (Reed & Osborne, 2014). Even though the bidirectional relationship between parent and child behaviour is now also studied in the development of autism (e.g., Campbell et al, 2015Campbell et al, , 2018Harker et al, 2016;Siller & Sigman, 2002, 2008Wan et al, 2012Wan et al, , 2013Yirmiya et al, 2006), with many interventions focusing on parenting behaviour (e.g., Green et al, 2017;Watson et al, 2017), it is important to be careful when addressing (the influence of) parenting behaviour in this group and to remain far from any "scapegoating" of parents.…”

“…Most studies compared infants at elevated likelihood of autism with infants at typical likelihood for ASD (Baker et al, 2010;Blasi et al, 2015;Campbell et al, 2015Campbell et al, , 2018Elsabbagh et al, 2015;Harker et al, 2016;McDonald et al, 2016;Wan et al, 2012Wan et al, , 2013. Five studies included only children with or at elevated likelihood of autism Oosterling et al, 2010;Shire et al, 2016;Watson et al, 2017) and one study followed up children at typical likelihood that had been screened positive for ASD likelihood (Suma et al, 2016).…”

Family Roles in Developing Resilience Skills in School Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

“…Positive parenting has been linked with enhanced language trajectories in ASD children (Siller & Sigman, 2002, 2008, and the ability to live independent functional life (Crowell, Keluskar, &Gorecki, 2019). For instance, Harker, Ibanez, Nguyen, Messinger, and Stone (2016) showed the family's critical role in healthily managing feelings and emotions among children with ASD in their study on the effect of parenting style on social smiling in infants at high and low risk for ASD. The study showed that maternal directiveness led to high social smiling infants with a high risk of ASDs.…”