Abstract

Emotional Availability (EA) during parent-child interactions refers to the reciprocity between the parent and the child, and especially to the parent's emotional adjustment to the entire spectrum of the child's negative and positive emotions, to the child's responses to the parent and the child's initiatives toward the parent (Emde, 1980). Emotional availability is measured using the Emotional Availability Scales, which include four scales for measuring the parent's behavior (sensitivity, structuring, lack of intrusion, and lack of hostility) and two scales for measuring the child's behavior (responsiveness and involvement) (Biringen, 2008). Currently, most studies of emotional availability have been conducted with typically developing children, and it is therefore important to expand this research to children with special needs and those with autism in particular, a disorder that includes communication impairments which may have a major impact on the child's interaction with his or her parents.

Among the few studies that have investigated the emotional availability of mother-child interactions with children with autism there is the Dolev et al. (2009) study. These researchers found associations between the emotional availability scales and the children's functioning, severity of symptoms, and the degree of distress of the mother. The purpose of the present study is to replicate and expand these findings.

A significant contribution of the study examining father-child, in addition to mother-child emotional availability. Although the importance of fathers in raising children with special needs is acknowledged (Flippin & Crais, 2011), to the best of our knowledge, no studies of father-child interaction in autism have been done. In addition, the study included a relatively large number of participants which increased its statistical power.

In addition to observations of parent-child interactions, the following parent and child characteristics were assessed: Parent's psychological distress and their broad autism phenotype characteristics, and children's level of intelligence, severity of symptoms and level of daily life functioning. The main hypothesis was that parental characteristics would be associated with parent's EA scales and that the child's characteristics would be associated with children's EA scales. Other exploratory questions were whether the parent characteristics will be related to the child's EA scales beyond the parent's EA scales, and whether the child's characteristics be related to the parent's EA scales.

Eighty boys with autism between the ages of 3-5.5 and each of their parents were observed during social play and free play episodes. Parent variables were assessed using self-report questionnaires and child variables were assessed using an IQ test, autism diagnosis, and parental reports.

Contrary to our hypotheses, no associations were found between parental characteristics (degree of psychological distress and broad autism phenotype) and parental EA scales. In addition, no associations were found between parental characteristics and children's EA scales. However, consistent with our hypothesis, children's with higher IQ, higher everyday functioning, and lower symptom severity exhibited more responsiveness and involving compared to children with lower IQs, everyday functioning, and symptom severity. In addition, mothers and fathers of children with higher IQs demonstrated a more optimal level of structuring with their child. In addition, mothers of children with lower levels everyday functioning exhibited more intrusive behaviors toward them and fathers of children with higher symptom severity structured the interactions with their child less well.

The study findings describe the characteristics of children with autism that can influence their behavior and their parents' behavior toward them during interactions. These findings have important implications for interventions that can enhance the emotional availability of parent child interactions in autism and can enhance our understanding of the parent-child relationship when the child has autism.