Do Parentese Prosody and Fathers' Involvement in Interacting Facilitate Social Interaction in Infants Who Later Develop Autism?

David Cohen,Mohamed Chetouani,Sandra Maestro,Raquel S Cassel,Pietro Muratori,Catherine Saint-Georges,Ammar Mahdhaoui,Filippo Muratori,Marie-Christine Laznik,Fabio Apicella

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0061402

Abstract

BackgroundWhether development of autism impacts the interactive process between an infant and his/her parents remains an unexplored issue.Methodology and Principal FindingsUsing computational analysis taking into account synchronic behaviors and emotional prosody (parentese), we assessed the course of infants' responses to parents' type of speech in home movies from typically developing (TD) infants and infants who will subsequently develop autism aged less than 18 months. Our findings indicate: that parentese was significantly associated with infant responses to parental vocalizations involving orientation towards other people and with infant receptive behaviours; that parents of infants developing autism displayed more intense solicitations that were rich in parentese; that fathers of infants developing autism spoke to their infants more than fathers of TD infants; and that fathers' vocalizations were significantly associated with intersubjective responses and active behaviours in infants who subsequently developed autism.ConclusionThe parents of infants who will later develop autism change their interactive pattern of behaviour by both increasing parentese and father's involvement in interacting with infants; both are significantly associated with infant's social responses. We stress the possible therapeutic implications of these findings and its implication for Dean Falk's theory regarding pre-linguistic evolution in early hominins.

Highlights

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are developmental disorders that are characterised by the presence of symptoms in 3 domains: (i) abnormalities in reciprocal social interactions; (ii) abnormalities in patterns of communication; and (iii) a repetitive repertoire of behaviours and interests
In a previous study based on home movies (HM), we showed that when studying interactive patterns with computational methods to take into account synchrony between partners, (i) deviant autistic behaviours appeared before 12 months; (ii) parents seemed to feel weaker interactive responsiveness and mainly weaker initiative from their infants; and (iii) parents increasingly tried to supply soliciting behaviours and touching [15]
Use of parentese among mothers showed the same decrease over time in both groups (b = 20.51; standard error = 0.097; p =,1026; b = 20.55; std error = 0.11; p =,1026 for semester 2 (S2) vs. semester 1 (S1), and semester 3 (S3) vs. S2, respectively)

Summary

Introduction

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are developmental disorders that are characterised by the presence of symptoms in 3 domains: (i) abnormalities in reciprocal social interactions; (ii) abnormalities in patterns of communication; and (iii) a repetitive repertoire of behaviours and interests. The most typical form of ASD is autism that presents with symptoms in all 3 domains and has an early age of onset (before 3 years). Symptoms, such as speech delay and stereotyped behaviour, are often evident between 18 and 36 months, but these clearly are not the initial manifestations of autism [1]. The first signs are abnormalities with eye contact, imitation, disengagement, joint attention, orienting to name, and body language These behaviours constitute important precursors of later-developing symptoms; whether these first signs impact the interactive process between an infant and their parents and whether they influence the development of the infant himself remain two complex and unexplored issues. Whether development of autism impacts the interactive process between an infant and his/her parents remains an unexplored issue

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Conclusion