Jakubowski, Karen Patricia
(2011)
Look at Mommy: Attention-Related Communication in Mothers of Children at Risk for Autism.
Undergraduate Thesis, University of Pittsburgh.
(Unpublished)
Abstract
Attentional difficulties are evident in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD; Landry & Bryson, 2004). Subtle atypicalities in attention are also apparent among later-born siblings of children with ASD (themselves at heightened biological risk for an ASD diagnosis; high-risk toddlers; HR), even those who are not eventually diagnosed with ASD (e.g., Merin et al., 2007). Mothers of children with ASD may modify child-directed communication to direct and maintain the child's attention (e.g., Adamson et al., 2001), and this pattern may generalize to communication with later-born HR infants. In light of this evidence, the present study explored patterns of child-directed communication in mothers of 18-month-old HR toddlers and mothers of same-age later-born toddlers with no family history of ASD (low-risk toddlers; LR), focusing particularly on the production of attention-related communication (i.e., communication focusing on capturing, directing, and maintaining children's attention and/or actions) and compared HR and LR toddlers' responses to maternal attention-related communication. Although both groups of mothers displayed relatively similar patterns of attention-related communication, mothers of HR toddlers produced significantly more utterances that involved attentionally salient words. Additionally, HR toddlers were less likely to respond to attention-related communication. In general, these findings suggest that having an older child with ASD may influence maternal behavior with later-born children, even when those children do not themselves necessarily manifest obvious ASD symptomatology. They also highlight the need for further research on dyadic interactions between mothers and HR infants.
Share
| Citation/Export: |
|
| Social Networking: |
|
Details
| Item Type: |
University of Pittsburgh ETD
|
| Status: |
Unpublished |
| Creators/Authors: |
|
| ETD Committee: |
|
| Date: |
2 May 2011 |
| Date Type: |
Completion |
| Defense Date: |
18 April 2011 |
| Approval Date: |
2 May 2011 |
| Submission Date: |
19 April 2011 |
| Access Restriction: |
No restriction; Release the ETD for access worldwide immediately. |
| Institution: |
University of Pittsburgh |
| Schools and Programs: |
Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences > Psychology
David C. Frederick Honors College |
| Degree: |
BPhil - Bachelor of Philosophy |
| Thesis Type: |
Undergraduate Thesis |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: |
ASD; child-directed speech; attention-related communication; high-risk siblings |
| Other ID: |
http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-04192011-095607/, etd-04192011-095607 |
| Date Deposited: |
10 Nov 2011 19:39 |
| Last Modified: |
15 Nov 2016 13:41 |
| URI: |
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/7335 |
Metrics
Monthly Views for the past 3 years
Plum Analytics
Actions (login required)
 |
View Item |
![[feed]](/images/feed-icon-32x32.png){kind=icon}