Do parentese prosody and fathers' involvement in interacting facilitate social interaction in infants who later develop autism?

PLoS One. 2013 May 1;8(5):e61402. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0061402. Print 2013.

Abstract

Background: Whether development of autism impacts the interactive process between an infant and his/her parents remains an unexplored issue.

Methodology and principal findings: Using 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.

Conclusion: The 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.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Autistic Disorder / psychology*
  • Child Development
  • Father-Child Relations*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Infant
  • Interpersonal Relations
  • Male
  • Models, Biological
  • Mother-Child Relations
  • Parents
  • Speech Acoustics*
  • Video Recording

Grants and funding

The Pisa "home video in autism" project was supported by grants PRIN 2003–2005 and PRIN 2005–2007 from the Italian Ministry of Instruction, University, and Research. The current study was supported by a grant (n°2008005170) from the Fondation de France given to MC and DC, by the Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Projet Emergence 2010) the European Commission (FP7: Michelangelo under grant agreement n° 288241), and the fund "Entreprendre pour aider". The funding agencies and the University were not involved in the study design, collection, analysis and interpretation of data, writing of the paper, or the decision to submit for publication.