Socio-Emotional Concern Dynamics in a Model of Real-Time Dyadic Interaction: Parent-Child Play in Autism

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Casper Hesp¹  Henderien W. Steenbeek¹  Paul L. C. van Geert¹ 

[1] Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Groningen;University of Amsterdam;Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam

关键词: autism;    dyadic play;    social skills;    play initiation;    child-parent;    dynamical model;    complexity;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01635

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

We used a validated agent-based model—Socio-Emotional CONcern DynamicS (SECONDS)—to model real-time playful interaction between a child diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and its parent. SECONDS provides a real-time (second-by-second) virtual environment that could be used for clinical trials and testing process-oriented explanations of ASD symptomatology. We conducted numerical experiments with SECONDS (1) for internal model validation comparing two parental behavioral strategies for stimulating social development in ASD (play-centered vs. initiative-centered) and (2) for empirical case-based model validation. We compared 2,000 simulated play sessions of two particular dyads with (second-by-second) time-series observations within 29 play sessions of a real parent-child dyad with ASD on six variables related to maintaining and initiating play. Overall, both simulated dyads provided a better fit to the observed dyad than reference null distributions. Given the idiosyncratic behaviors expected in ASD, the observed correspondence is non-trivial. Our results demonstrate the applicability of SECONDS to parent-child dyads in ASD. In the future, SECONDS could help design interventions for parental care in ASD.

【 授权许可】

CC BY