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Research Team
Research Team
Dasha Sekulich
Dasha Sekulich
Speech Pathology & Audiology
Mary Mangan
Mary Mangan
Speech Pathology & Audiology
Shannon Whitlock
Shannon Whitlock
Speech Pathology & Audiology
Scarlett Studebaker
Scarlett Studebaker
Speech Pathology & Audiology
Cara Hadland
Cara Hadland
Speech Pathology & Audiology
Dr. Aaron Shield, Ph.D.
Dr. Aaron Shield, Ph.D.
Speech Pathology & Audiology
Background Information
Background Information
Children with autism have difficulty engaging in episodes of joint attention and social interactions, which are essential for language development.
Parent behaviors are central to child engagement, as parents use strategies to initiate and maintain attention, thereby facilitating social play interactions.
Research on parent–child interaction in autism has historically focused on mothers, with few studies examining fathers, creating a gap in understanding of how both sexes uniquely support child engagement.
Prior work suggests sex differences in parental interaction style: mothers being more responsive and fathers being more directive. However, no studies have directly examined how these differences manifest in attention-getting strategies, particularly across modality (visual vs auditory)
Research Question
Research Question
Do mothers and fathers of young autistic children use different strategies to engage their children in joint play?
Participants
Participants
Study group included nineteen dyads of parents with young autistic children; five dyads with fathers, and fourteen dyads with mothers.
Child sex: male-16; female-3
Child age range: 3yrs 7m - 6yrs 9m
Mean age: 5.31yrs
To confirm autism diagnosis and severity, the Social Responsiveness Survey (SRS T-score), a caregiver report, was used.
Participant SRS T-score ranges:
Severe (≥76): 11 participants
Moderate (66-75): 5 participants
Mild (60-65): 3 participants
Typical (<60): 0 participants
Participants demonstrated elevated autism-related social impairment (M = 79.4, SD = 14.0), with the majority scoring in the severe range.
Methods
Methods
The aim of this study is to examine whether there are differences in attention-getting strategies between mothers and fathers in American culture.
Three activities were provided to each dyad: a bean-bag toss, a grocery set, and a picture book. Parents completed each activity at home and filmed themselves. Videos were then imported into the coding software ELAN.
Data was coded for:
Strategies: Any method, as defined in our coding guide, used by the parent to gain or maintain child engagement with the activity.
Strategy modality: Auditory, visual, tactile, bimodal (visual-auditory, visual-tactile).
Strategy repetition/prolongation: Strategies repeated or sustained for ≥ 2 seconds within a single code
Three minutes of each activity were coded. Then, the strategies displayed by the mothers and father were compared.
Results
Results
Mothers and Fathers did not show significant differences in the types of attention-getting strategies used.
The most common strategies used by both sexes were speech (fathers: 56.9%, mothers: 59.1%) and object manipulation (fathers: 14.9%, mothers: 14.4%).
Mothers and Fathers did not show significant differences in modality.
The most common modality used by both sexes was auditory strategies such as speech and vocalization, (fathers: 64.2%, mothers: 64.8%)
There was no significant difference between repetition and prolongation used by each sex.
Mothers did engage in repeated and sustained behaviors with some increased frequency (5.83% vs 4.65% of strategies).
Discussion
Discussion
Based on our analyses, there is no strong evidence of overall strategy differences between mothers and fathers.
Likewise, there was no strong evidence of differences in modality or prolongation/repetition of strategies between mothers and fathers.
These findings contradict previous research. This contradiction may be due to the fact that we coded behavioral data as opposed to relying on self-report measures, as other studies have (Giannotti et al., 2021) .
Overall, speech was the dominant strategy for all parents. However, there were some differences, for example: mothers used slightly more speech than fathers and fathers used slightly more voacalization than mothers, but these differences were not large enough to be significant.
In conclusion, our findings indicate that American mothers and fathers gain and maintain their young autistic childrens’ attention in very similar manners.
Future Study and Limitations
Future Study and Limitations
Given that our participant dyads included fourteen mothers and five fathers, more data is needed to verify the validity and reliability of our results.
Parent strategies may vary based on the child’s sex; given that the sample is not balanced (more male children than female).
Linguistic Speech was the most-used strategy, however we did not code what was being said. It is possible that differences may exist in the linguistic content of mothers and fathers.
Future research should evaluate the relative effectiveness of different attention-getting strategies in promoting sustained engagement and social interaction in children with autism.
The following is an image of poster presented at the 2026 Undergraduate Research Forum
NACE Career Readiness Competencies
NACE Career Readiness Competencies
Teamwork: Our coders met weekly to ensure our coding guide was as accurate as possible and to discuss any questions that came up during the individual coding process.
Technology: All members of our research team had to develop/have proficiency using the Elan software to code our data.
Critical Thinking: Coding requires analyzing data for small details and considering the context and intentions of behavior.
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