2016 Gatlinburg Conference Poster
PS-25
Title: Co-Regulation Strategies in Toddlers with ASD and Their Mothers
Authors: Amanda Gulsrud, Gerhard Hellemann, Connie Kasari
Introduction: This study explores the temporal relationship of emotion co-regulation strategies in young children with autism
and their mothers within the context of an early social-communication intervention. Previous work on this sample of children by
Gulsrud et al., 2010 examined correlations between child and maternal strategy use averaged across an entire session. This study
aims to further explore the contingent relationship between the dyad by employing sequential analytic approaches to fully
elucidate the sequential and casual relationship between mother and child behaviors.
Methods: Study participants included 34 mother-child pairs from an existing intervention study for toddlers diagnosed with ASD
and their mothers (Kasari et al., 2010). Each of the children met criteria for autism spectrum disorder on the Autism Diagnosis
Interview-Revised (Lord, Rutter, & Couteur, 1994) and the Autism Diagnosis Observation Schedule (Lord, et al., 1989). The
children ranged in chronological age from 21 to 36 months old with an average age of 30.6 months. The average mental age was
19 months. Approximately 40% of children were from ethnic minority backgrounds and 26 children were males. The majority of
mothers had completed college and had graduate or professional training, with an average age of 34.5 years. A 10-minute
mother-child play interaction was recorded at the end of each of the 24 individual intervention sessions. Sessions identified with
at least one distress episode lasting 30 seconds or more were coded using a time sampling method in 10-second epochs for child
emotion self-regulation strategies and maternal co-regulation strategies. The child's emotion self-regulation strategies were
adapted from a study of typical toddlers during episodes of negativity (Goldsmith et al., 1999). Maternal strategies were adapted
from a study of typical toddlers and their mothers (Grolnick et al., 1998).
Results: Periods in which the child was engaged in physical coping strategies (e.g. distraction, avoidance), and the period
immediately following use of this strategy were identified. Maternal strategies during these two distinct phases of the child's
coping behavior were also examined. Results confirmed that during child physical coping the mother was almost twice as likely to
use emotional support strategies (22% vs. 13%) , and immediately following this period mothers were more likely to use active
support strategies (70% vs. 55%). Planned future analyses include detailed considerations of the other coping strategies available
for the children, and the interactions with the mothers' choice of coping strategies, by developing a markov chain model of the
transition between these different coping states.
Discussion: Although previous work has shown that maternal active support strategies during negative distress episodes are the
most commonly used (43%), the current study shows that mother's change their type of support depending on the child's
emerging ability to self-regulate. While children engage in physical coping strategies, we see an increase in maternal emotional
support strategies (e.g. "I see you trying" or "I know you want that toy"). Once the child's own physical coping ceases, mothers
begin to engage in more active strategies. This temporal and specific relationship suggests that mothers are keenly aware of their
child's growing ability to self-regulate and may differentiate types of support depending on the needs of the child.
References/Citations:
• Gulsrud, A. C., Jahromi, L. B., & Kasari, C. (2010). The co-regulation of emotions between mothers and their children
with autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental disorders, 40(2), 227-237.
• Kasari, C., Gulsrud, A. C., Wong, C., Kwon, S., & Locke, J. (2010). Randomized controlled caregiver mediated joint
engagement intervention for toddlers with autism. Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 40(9), 1045-1056.
• Norris, James R. (1998). Markov chains. Cambridge University Press.