1. 9th International Conference on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology
London, UK, July 2014
Conflict of Interest: None
Contact: scott1p@uwindsor.ca
Mothers’ Elaboration Prompting and Narrative Exploration in Children
with Autism Spectrum Disorder or another Developmental Disability
Shawna A. Scott, Jennifer L. Scammell, Samantha Metler, Kristen Williams, & Julie Hakim-Larson
University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario, Canada
BACKGROUND
• Parent elaboration provides a stimulating narrative experience for children,
and is a reciprocal process exploring concepts through statements and
questions (Tõugu et al., 2011; Melzi et al., 2011).
• Elaboration is linked to children’s development of literacy, emotional
understanding, and social skills (e.g., Favez, 2011).
• Elaboration is a bi-directional process that may be influenced by a child’s
current cognitive ability (Harkins, 1993).
• Few studies have examined elaboration in children diagnosed with Autism
Spectrum Disorder (ASD) or another Developmental Disability (DD; Goldman,
2002).
• In the present study, elaboration was assessed using a novel and integrative
coding system for mother-child dyads.
• To examine parent and child elaboration in dyads of mothers of children with
ASD or another DD.
• To determine whether:
(a) Maternal elaboration would be associated with independent child
elaboration.
(b) Differences exist in elaboration between the two groups of dyads (i.e.,
children ASD and children with DD).
METHOD
CONCLUSIONS
Participants
• Participants included 93 mothers (Mage = 37.9 years, SD = 5.22) and their
children ages 3-12, including 73 boys (Mage = 6.8 years, SD = 3.07) and 20 girls
(Mage = 7.1 years, SD = 2.45).
• Most mothers were Caucasian, college or university educated, and with a
family income over $60,000.
• Children were diagnosed with ASD (46.2%) or another DD (53.8%).
Procedure
• Dyads were recruited through local children’s agencies and through a pool of
undergraduate students.
• Mother-child dyads audio-recorded a storytelling session using a text-free
picture book, One Frog Too Many (Mayer & Mayer, 1975). Recordings were
then transcribed and segmented.
Measures
• Coding captured the proportion of total segments that included mothers’
elaborative questions or statements, children’s prompted elaboration, and
children’s spontaneous/independent elaboration.
RESULTS
• For mothers of children with ASD, clarification and tag
statements were significantly positively associated with
independent elaboration in their children.
• For mothers of children with other DDs, expansion, clarification,
descriptive, and prompting their children’s character speech
were significantly positively associated with independent
elaboration in their children.
• After controlling for child age and mother’s education level, different patterns of significant partial correlations were found between the
two groups (see Tables 1 and 2).
• ASD Group: Mothers’ greater use of clarification and tag statements were positively associated with children’s independent plot,
emotion, and character speech elaboration.
• Other DD Group: Mothers’ greater use of expansion, clarification, descriptive, and prompting their children’s character speech was
positively associated with children’s independent emotion elaboration. However, mothers’ greater use of character speech and
character names was negatively associated with children’s independent emotion elaboration.
• Using ANCOVA, mothers of children with ASD used significantly more pause statements, F(1,88) = 5.05, p = .027, partial η2 = .054. No
other group differences were significant for the remaining variables.
AIMS
Legend:
Total: total segments
NC: proportion of segments that do not have a code
Mothers’ Elaboration:
• EXP: expansion statements
• CL: clarification statements
• DESC: descriptive statements
• EVAL: evaluative statements
• YN: yes/no statements
• TAG: tag statements
• PAUSE: pause statements
• AB: choice statements
• SPCH-P: character speech
• NAME-P: character naming
Children’s Elaboration:
• SPCH-C: character speech that is parent prompted
• NAME-C: character naming that is parent prompted
• IND-N: independent character naming
• IND-P: independent plot statements
• IND-E: independent emotion statements
• IND-S: independent character speech
Table 1: ASD Group (n = 43) Table 2: Other DD Group (n = 50)
(Mayer & Mayer, 1975)
Note. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
• Mothers of children with ASD used significantly more pause
statements, inviting their children to complete a leading
statement.
• Results suggest that mothers’ narrative styles (i.e., their
elaborative prompting and questioning) may differentially
facilitate greater elaborative reciprocity in children with ASD or
other DDs.
IND-N IND-P IND-E IND-S
Total -.10 .08 .12 -.02
EXP -.13 .02 .16 .05
CL -.19 .43** .61*** .38*
DESC -.22 .24 .34* .21
EVAL .00 .02 .13 -.05
YN -.14 -.14 .04 -.09
TAG -.23 .79*** .80*** .51***
PAUSE .04 .13 .15 .01
AB -.05 -.08 .02 -.07
SPCH-P .12 -.11 -.21 -.08
NAME-P -.01 -.12 -.09 -.06
SPCH-C -.14 -.07 .03 -.04
NAME-C .42** -.09 -.07 -.07
NC .14 -.59*** -.59*** -.51***
IND-N IND-P IND-E IND-S
Total -.10 -.08 .12 .36*
EXP .15 .16 .32* -.14
CL .00 .35* .43** -.12
DESC .34* .10 .51*** -.09
EVAL -.11 -.06 .27 -.08
YN .01 -.09 .01 -.06
TAG .06 .11 .05 -.01
PAUSE .22 .27 .26 -.05
AB -.08 -.01 -.03 .08
SPCH-P .01 -.19 -.32* -.11
NAME-P -.08 -.23 -.32* -.10
SPCH-C .91*** .15 .30* -.10
NAME-C -.03 -.04 -.05 -.00
NC -.31* -.23 -.21 -.05
Research Funded by The Provincial
Centre for Child and Youth Mental
Health at CHEO