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What Facilitates Social Engagement in Preschool Children with Autism?

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Abstract

We studied the association between an adult’s behavior and episodes of social engagement (ESEs) in young children with autism during play-based assessment. ESEs were defined as events in which a child looked toward the adult’s face and simultaneously showed an additional form of communicative behavior. The adult’s behavior before each ESE, and before time-sampled control periods, was rated using Coding Active Sociability in Preschoolers with Autism (CASPA). As predicted, adult musical/motoric activity, communications that followed the child’s focus of attention, scaffolding through social routines, imitations of the child, and adult repetitions were significantly more prevalent before ESEs, but cognitive assessment activities, adult inactivity, and “ignoring” were significantly less prevalent. We consider the implications for understanding the developmental psychopathology of autism.

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Acknowledgments

This research was initiated in part fulfilment of a PhD thesis by the first author at the University of Wales, Bangor. She has been funded there by the North West Wales NHS Trust throughout the duration of the research. We should also like to acknowledge financial support from Gwynedd Health Authority Research Committee, the Hayward Foundation, the Wales Office of Research and Development for Health and Social Care, and the University of Wales, Bangor. Part of the second author’s contribution came while he was at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford. We are deeply indebted to Tony Lee for his typically generous input, Caroline Holterman for her diligence with the coding and other contributions, and the clinicians, parents and children who participated in this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychology, University of Wales, Bangor, Gwynedd, LL57 2DG, UK

    Dawn C. Wimpory & Susan Nash

  2. North West Wales NHS Trust, Bangor, Gwynedd, UK

    Dawn C. Wimpory

  3. Developmental Psychopathology Research Unit, Tavistock Clinic, London, UK

    R. Peter Hobson

  4. Institute of Child Health, University College London, London, UK

    R. Peter Hobson

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  1. Dawn C. Wimpory
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  2. R. Peter Hobson
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  3. Susan Nash
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Correspondence to Dawn C. Wimpory.

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Wimpory, D.C., Hobson, R.P. & Nash, S. What Facilitates Social Engagement in Preschool Children with Autism?. J Autism Dev Disord 37, 564–573 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-006-0187-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-006-0187-x

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