Mother-Child Synchrony and Externalizing Behaviors in School-Aged Children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorders

Synchrony is a multi-faceted construct, defined here as the mutual warmth and responsiveness between a mother and her child. As children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) struggle to navigate various aspects of social life, we expected that impairments in synchrony would be seen, but that mothers would show adaptability. Twenty-five children (10 met ASD criteria on a gold standard autism assessment) completed a brief cognitive assessment and nine semi-structured play tasks with their mother, adapted from the Marschak Interaction Method. Synchrony was not found to moderate the relationship between ASD severity and externalizing behaviors, as hypothesized. ASD severity did predict externalizing behaviors. While children in the ASD group were more negative during the observed play tasks, there were no group differences on mother or dyad scores. Despite power limitations, our findings suggest important future directions for examination of mother and dyad mechanisms that better explain these differences.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Department dc:contributor.department

Psychology

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2013

Author dc:creator

• Hassenfeldt, Tyler Anne

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Scarpa, Angela

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• White, Susan W.
• Deater-Deckard, Kirby

• Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD)
• synchrony
• externalizing behaviors

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Dc Identifier Other

etd-05152013-131102

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/42670