Salivary α-amylase as a marker of stress reduction in individuals with intellectual disability and autism in response to occupational and music therapy.

BACKGROUND: Although the benefits of a range of disability-centric therapies have been well studied, little remains known about how they work, let alone how to monitor these benefits in a precise and reliable way. METHODS: Here, in two independent studies, we examine how sessions consisting of occupational or music therapy, both widely recognised for their effectiveness, modulate levels of salivary α-amylase (sAA), a now time- and cost-efficient marker of stress, in individuals with intellectual disability and autism spectrum disorder. Pre-session and post-session levels of sAA were compared in both groups in response to therapy and control sessions. RESULTS: In comparison to control sessions, occupational therapy significantly dampened rises in sAA levels while music therapy significantly decreased baseline sAA levels, highlighting the ability of both types of therapy to reduce stress and by proxy contribute to enhancing overall well-being. CONCLUSIONS: Not only do these results confirm the stress-reducing nature of two types of multisensory therapy, but they support the use of sAA as a potential tool for evaluating stress levels in individuals with intellectual disability and autism spectrum disorder, providing an important physiological lens that may guide strategies in clinical and non-clinical care for individuals with disabilities.

Understanding early communication signals in autism: a study of the perception of infants' cry.

BACKGROUND: Previous studies have highlighted that episodes of crying of children with autistic disorder (AD) were perceived as inexplicable from their parents who could not identify causative factors. These results supported the view of AD as related to a problem of expressing and sharing emotions. Moreover, no evidence has been presented on which characteristics of a cry episode influence the adult perception. Aim of our research is to investigate how acoustical features of crying episodes modulate their perception of infants with ASD compared with infants with typical development (TD) and infants with developmental delay (DD). METHODS: Two studies were employed. In study 1, we artificially modified structural parameters (fundamental frequency, duration of the pauses, waveform modulation) of a cry episode, and then 50 adults (parents and non-parents) were asked to judge the level of distress elicited. In study 2, acoustic analysis was applied to episodes of crying selected from retrospective home videos of 42 children with AD, TD and DD at 18 months. RESULTS: The results showed that (1) differences in the fundamental frequency and in other structural parameters of the cry lead parents and non-parents to perceive an episode of crying as more aversive and (2) at 18 months of age, AD episodes of crying have higher fundamental frequency (f0). CONCLUSION: Our findings offer support for the hypothesis that acoustic characteristics of episodes of crying of children with autism, especially higher fundamental frequencies, may account for mental states of uneasiness in the listener.

Fathers' play with their Down Syndrome children.

BACKGROUND: In children with Down Syndrome (DS), as in other groups of special needs children, development depends crucially on the degree to which parents provide appropriate stimulation and effective support. The majority of recent studies investigating interactions between parents and children with DS have been conducted on mothers. METHOD: Through observation of child solitary play, child collaborative play with their father, and father play with their child, the current study focused on paternal contributions to child play in association with the effective quality of father-child interactions. A total of 19 children (M chronological age = 35.32 months, SD = 10.35; M mental age = 19.58, SD = 5.43) with DS and their fathers participated in the study. Two 10-min sessions, of child solitary play and collaborative play with their father, were videorecorded. A coding system for exploratory and symbolic play was applied to both sessions, and the Emotional Availability (EA) Scales were independently applied to the collaborative play session as a measure of the effective quality of the father-child interaction. RESULTS: Children showed more symbolic play during collaborative sessions compared with solitary sessions. Bivariate correlations showed positive associations between father play and child exploratory and symbolic play. Cluster analysis identified dyads in low, medium and high EA groups, which differed in terms of each partner's play. Specifically, both fathers and children of high EA dyads were more likely to show more symbolic play and less exploratory play than those with low EA dyads. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings enrich the theoretical perspective that dyadic interactions based on emotional involvement may lead to enhanced cognitive functioning in children with DS.

Examining cross-cultural differences in autism spectrum disorder: A multinational comparison from Greece, Italy, Japan, Poland, and the United States.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by social and communication impairments as well as restricted, repetitive behavior patterns. Despite the fact that ASD is reported worldwide, very little research exists examining ASD characteristics on a multinational scale. Cross-cultural comparisons are especially important for ASD, since cultural differences may impact the perception of symptoms. Identifying behaviors that are similarly reported as problematic across cultures as well as identifying behaviors in which there is cultural variation could aid in the development and refinement of more universally effective measures. The present study sought to examine similarities and differences in caregiver endorsement of symptom severity through scores on the Baby Infant Screen for Children with aUtIsm Traits (BISCUIT). The BISCUIT was utilized to examine ASD core symptomology in 250 toddlers diagnosed with ASD from Greece, Italy, Japan, Poland, and the United States. Significant differences in overall ASD symptom severity and endorsement were found between multinational groups. Implications of the results are discussed.

A cross-national study of self-evaluations and attributions in parenting: Argentina, Belgium, France, Israel, Italy, Japan, and the United States.

This study investigated and compared ideas about parenting in Argentine, Belgian, French, Israeli, Italian, Japanese, and U.S. mothers of 20-month-olds. Mothers evaluated their competence, satisfaction, investment, and role balance in parenting and rated attributions of successes and failures in 7 parenting tasks to their own ability, effort, or mood, to difficulty of the task, or to child behavior. Few cross-cultural similarities emerged; rather, systematic culture effects for both self-evaluations and attributions were common, such as varying degrees of competence and satisfaction in parenting, and these effects are interpreted in terms of specific cultural proclivities and emphases. Child gender was not an influential factor. Parents' self-evaluations and attributions help to explain how and why parents parent and provide further insight into the broader cultural contexts of children's development.

Parenting beliefs and behaviors in northern and southern groups of Italian mothers of young infants.

Similarities and differences in northern and southern Italian mothers' social and didactic parenting beliefs and behaviors, and relations between their beliefs and behaviors, are reported. Both groups of mothers reported that they engaged more in social than didactic interactions with their infants, whereas in actuality both groups engaged in didactic behaviors with their infants for longer periods of time than they engaged in social behaviors. In addition, northern mothers engaged in more social interactions with their infants than did southern mothers. No correlations between beliefs and behaviors emerged in either group. These data speak to issues of intracultural variation and cross-cultural similarities in family psychology and parenting, belief-behavior relations in parenting, and the importance of methodology (parental report or observation) in the study of parenting and family functioning.

Three lessons from Philip Teitelbaum and their application to studies of motor development in humans and mice.

In this paper we present a number of studies, some with humans and some with animals that have been directly influenced by the work of Philip Teitelbaum. As appropriate for a festschrift, we integrate a number of contributions from different fields (specifically, clinical psychopathology and neurobiology) and present the studies, not so much chronologically, but in ways that illustrate some of the key lessons that we have learned from Philip Teitelbaum. We would summarize these lessons as follows: (1) Complex and precise tools are required to assess the complexity of specific behaviors; using simplified tools will bias our understanding of the behavior itself. (2) Studying a specific behavior in atypical brain conditions is required to fully understand that behavior and how the brain controls it. (3) Considering the evolutionary basis of human behavior, studying corresponding behaviors in other mammalian species is required to strengthen and deepen our knowledge of specific human behaviors. In this paper we describe studies on motor development in humans and mice and their implication for the diagnosis of autism and early parental care that illustrate these three lessons.

Perceptions of distress in young children with autism compared to typically developing children: a cultural comparison between Japan and Italy.

This study investigates how adults in two contrasting cultures (Italian and Japanese) perceive episodes of crying of typically developing (TD) children and children with Autism Disorder (AD). Although cries of children with AD have been reported to elicit more distress in Western cultures, it is not known whether similar findings hold in Eastern cultures. In Experiment 1, we artificially modified structural parameters (fundamental frequency, duration of pauses, waveform modulation) of cries and asked Italian and Japanese adults to judge levels of expressed and felt distress in the cries. In Experiment 2, we asked Italian and Japanese adults to report these levels of distress on hearing cries of AD and TD children. In both cultures, cries with higher fundamental frequency and shorter pause durations were judged more distressing and distressed and observers perceived cries of children with AD as more distressing and distressed than cries of TD children. The similar responses in adults from two contrasting societies constitute evidence that reactions to cries of children with AD might be universal.

Maternal functional speech to children: a comparison of autism spectrum disorder, Down syndrome, and typical development.

Children with developmental disabilities benefit from their language environment as much as, or even more than, typically developing (TD) children, but maternal language directed to developmentally delayed children is an underinvestigated topic. The purposes of the present study were to compare maternal functional language directed to children with two developmental disabilities--autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and Down syndrome (DS)--with TD children and to investigate relations of maternal functional language with child language skills. Participants were 60 mothers and their children with TD (n = 20), DS (n = 20), or ASD (n = 20). Children's mean developmental age was 24.77 months (SD = 8.47) and did not differ across the groups. Mother and child speech were studied during naturalistic play. We found (a) similarities in maternal functional language directed to the two groups of children with developmental disabilities compared to that directed to TD children and (b) a positive association between subcategories of information-salient speech and child mean length of utterance in TD dyads only. The clinical and developmental implications of these findings are discussed.

ASSESSMENT OF DISTRESS IN YOUNG CHILDREN: A COMPARISON OF AUTISTIC DISORDER, DEVELOPMENTAL DELAY, AND TYPICAL DEVELOPMENT.

Distress emotions in very young children are manifest in vocal, facial, and bodily cues. Moreover, children with different developmental conditions (i.e. Autistic Disorder- AD, Developmental Delay- DD, Typically Developing- TD) appear to manifest their distress emotions via different channels. To decompose channel of emotional distress display by group, we conducted a study in which video clips of crying of 18 children 18 months of age belonging to three groups (AD, DD, TD) were modified to isolate vocal, facial, or bodily cues, and 42 female adults were asked to judge the distress and typicality (expected normality) of the different stimuli. We find variation in adult judgements of distress and typicality by child group (AD, DD, TD) and by isolated cues (vocal, facial, or body). Although there is some overlap between responses to episodes of crying of children with AD and those with DD, the different cues of crying of children with AD tend to be considered more atypical and distressed than those of the other two groups (DD and TD). Early assessment of different cues of the expression of distress, and more generally of emotional expressivity in a child, may provide useful information for pediatricians and practitioners who are in contact with young children and must make clinical screening decisions. The findings also alert parents of children with AD to important aspects of their cries.

Mother-child play: children with Down syndrome and typical development.

Child solitary and collaborative mother-child play with 21 children with Down syndrome and 33 mental-age-matched typically developing children were compared. In solitary play, children with Down syndrome showed less exploratory but similar symbolic play compared to typically developing children. From solitary to collaborative play, children with Down syndrome increased their exploratory play, attaining the same level as typically developing children. Pretense significantly increased from solitary to collaborative play only in typically developing children. Differences between mothers' play in the two groups mirrored those between their children. Both groups showed similar attunement and synchrony. Mothers contribute to the play development of children with Down syndrome through their own adaptation to their children's limitations and potentialities.