The emotional availability in mother-child and father-child interactions in families with children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

Background: Emotional availability (EA) is a dyadic relationship construct that can be considered an index of emotional quality of parent-child interaction. Using this construct, some research showed that both parent and child components of EA reflect key aspects of the parent-child relationship, but there are few studies that investigated these aspects in families with children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The present study addresses several specific issues about the emotional availability of parents of children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Method: We observed free-play interactions of 40 children with ASD (chronological age = 41.6 months, SD = 12; M mental age = 30.9 months, SD = 13.3) playing separately with their mothers and fathers one by one. We coded each parent-child dyad using the Emotional Availability Scales (EAS, Biringen, 2008). Results: Findings showed that mothers and fathers were equally emotionally available to their children. There were no differences between the two in parents' EA scales nor in their associations with child level of functioning and severity of the symptoms. In addition, children showed similar mean levels of Responsiveness and Involvement in mother-child and father-child interactions. However, children's emotional availability was associated to their cognitive functioning and the severity of their symptoms. Conclusions: The emotional quality of dyadic interaction is equal in mother-child and father-child dyads in families of children with ASD. We discuss the clinical utility of the EA Scales for assessing relationship between parents and their children with ASD and we speculate the possible relevance of our findings on father-child relationship for future intervention studies involving fathers on par with mothers.

Emotional Availability and Play in Mother–Child Dyads with ASD: Changes during a Parental Based Intervention

“…However, the recent socio-cultural changes implicate an increasing involvement of fathers in child rearing. In line with this, scientific literature highlights the relevance of fathering for child psychological development in children with and without developmental disabilities [18][19][20][21][22]. These results pointed out both similarities and differences in the interactive modalities that may support specific aspects of child development.…”

“…[33][34][35][36] and because of this the EA Scales are one of the most widely used instruments for assessing the interaction within the parent-child dyad. However, to our knowledge only few studies have analyzed EA in mother-child with ASD dyads [21,27,[37][38][39] and no studies investigated EA in a longitudinal design in these dyads. Furthermore, EA is found to be predictive of various positive developmental outcomes such as attachment security [39,40], emotion expressions and regulation [41] and school readiness [40].…”

Father–Child Interactions in Preschool Children with ASD: A Systematic Review

“…The samples of the current review considered children in the preschool range of age. Three studies considered children from 24 to 71 months of age [ 57 , 58 , 59 ]. One study took into account an age range from 32 to 76 months [ 60 ].…”

Quantifying the Child–Therapist Interaction in ASD Intervention: An Observational Coding System

“…The first group refers to general constructs and usually implies a rating judgment, often based on Likert scales, to estimate the level of specific aspects of the interaction. As an example, the construct of the emotional availability (EA) has been widely studied in the context of infant–caregiver interactions [ 36 , 37 , 38 ], and operationalized in the emotional availability scales [ 39 ], a validated research tool for parenting and clinical research [ 40 , 41 , 42 ]. Differently from global coding scales, micro-coding systems focus on behavioral manifestations with fine granularity and capture behaviors at their most specific level.…”