Three physiological responses in fathers and non-fathers’ to vocalizations of typically developing infants and infants with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

Children with ASD, even before receiving a formal diagnosis, express atypical patterns of distress vocalizations (namely, episodes of crying). Their cries have higher fundamental frequencies, shorter inter-bout pauses, and fewer utterances. Cries of children with ASD are also perceived differently from other cries, and these perceptual differences may alter parent-infant interaction. This study assessed multiple physiological responses in fathers and non-fathers to atypical distress vocalizations (cries of children with ASD), acoustically matched typical distress vocalizations (cries of typically developing children), and positive vocalizations (laughter of typically developing children). The experimental procedures were designed to measure how components of the autonomic nervous system respond to typical and atypical infant vocalizations. Three convergent methodologies (Galvanic Skin Response – GSR; cardiac dynamics via Inter-Beat Interval – IBI; right hand temperature change – RHTC) were performed on two groups with contrasting caregiving experience: fathers of typically developing children (n=10) and non-fathers (n=10). Inferential statistical analysis compared the two groups (fathers, non-fathers) and three stimulus types (ASD cry, typical cry, laughter) for the three measures (GSR, IBI, RHTC). Both fathers and non-fathers showed greater negative responses (increased GSR) to ASD cries compared to typical cries and laughter. Fathers showed higher IBI and greater temperature increases (RHTC) than non-fathers while listening to typical and atypical cries. Fathers and non-fathers showed more emotional arousal mediated by sympathetic activation while listening to cries of children with ASD. Fathers were calmer and acted more promptly than non-fathers while listening to typical cries, perhaps because the fathers had more experience in caring for crying infants. These findings point to similarities and differences in fathers’ and non-fathers’ physiological responsiveness to cries of children with ASD and might guide specific intervention programs for parents of children at risk of ASD.

Physiological and self-report responses of parents of children with autism spectrum disorder to children crying

“…As crying can be considered one of many challenging situations parents experience in their daily life, it is possible that parents with a child with ASD have their own strategy to deal with crying, such as staying calmer (with higher IBI compared to that of parents of TD children in our study) to crying. This is also in line with the previous study in which adults with parenting experiences (fathers) were found to be calmer (higher IBI) than non-parents while listening to cries (Esposito et al, 2015). Interestingly, these differences and similarities were observed not only during the listening of ASD cry, but also TD cry.…”

“…This is also in line with a previous study in which fathers were found to be calmer than non-fathers while listening to cries (Esposito et al, 2015).…”

“…However, very little is known about physiological responses, and how they are modulated in parents of children with ASD. Recently, a study has pointed out similarities and differences between parents and non-parents' physiological responsiveness to cries of children with ASD (Esposito, Valenzi, Islam, & Bornstein, 2015). In particular, fathers showed higher Inter-Beat Interval (IBI) than non-fathers while listening to typical and atypical cries, indicating that fathers were calmer than non-fathers while listening to cries, and the authors suggested that perhaps because fathers have more exposure to or experience in caring for crying.…”

“…cardiac Inter-Beat Interval (IBI; the inverse of heart rate), which is a temporal distance in millisecond between two consecutive heartbeats, was considered, because increases of IBI usually happen in a calming condition, while IBI decrease is often associated with stress (Esposito et al, 2015). The IBI was used to be an indicator in the literature, considering several fields such as emotional concordance (Butler, Gross, & Barnard, 2014), empathy (Oliveira-Silva & Gonçalves, 2011), emotion regulation (Hannesdóttir, Doxie, Ann Bell, Ollendick, & Wolfe, 2010) and infant calming responses (Esposito, Yoshida, et al, 2013 Guided by an extensive literature showing that cry episodes belonging to children with ASD are perceived as more aversive and elicit more negative feelings compared to cry episodes of TD children, we developed two main hypotheses.…”

“…Frequencies outside the 200Hz to 1200Hz were filtered out to remove frequencies that are outside of the cry range and due to noise (Abou-Abbas, Tadj, & Fersaie, 2017;Esposito et al, 2015Esposito et al, , 2011Sheinkopf et al, 2012). The First Spectral Peak (FSP) was obtained by identifying the value of the first amplitude peak of the LTAS output.…”