title: Early social communicative behaviours of preschoolers with autism spectrum disorder during interaction with their mothers.
abstract: The present study examined spontaneous symbolic play, declarative joint attention, social referencing and imitation of symbolic play in 3- to 6-year-old children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD; n = 20) during interaction with their mothers. Compared to a control group (n = 20) matched on age and IQ, the children with ASD initiated less joint attention with their mothers when confronted with a pleasant event and they showed a tendency to play less symbolically and more non-functionally. Contrary to expectations, children with ASD showed no social referencing or imitation deficits. Interestingly, two clusters of intercorrelating behaviours were found in the ASD group: one suggesting symbolic or metarepresentational abilities, the other comprising interpersonal behaviours. The findings support the hypothesis that early social communicative abilities may follow a different developmental pathway in ASD, and stress the importance of a contextual factor, namely the presence of the mother.
authors.affiliation: Research Group Developmental Disorders, Ghent University, Belgium. Petra.Warreyn@UGent.be
authors.forename: Petra
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Warreyn
authors.forename: Herbert
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Roeyers
authors.forename: Isabel
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: De Groote
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003142:Communication; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D010988:Play and Playthings; D012919:Social Behavior; D013561:Symbolism