Togetherness, beyond the eyes: A systematic review on the interaction between visually impaired children and their parents

Bodily-tactile early intervention: a pilot study of the role of maternal touch and emotional availability in interactions between three children with visual impairment and additional disabilities and their mothers

Background

Children with visual impairment and additional disabilities (VIAD) have difficulty accessing the visual information related to their parents' facial expressions and gestures. Similarly, it may be hard for parents to detect their children's subtle expressions. These challenges in accessibility may compromise emotional availability (EA) in parent-child interactions. The systematic use of the bodily-tactile modality for expressive and receptive communicative functions may function as a strategy to compensate for a child's lack of vision. This multiple-case study explored the effects of a bodily-tactile early intervention for three mothers and their one-year-old children with VIAD.

Methods

Video data from baseline, intervention, and follow-up sessions were analyzed using a bodily-tactile coding procedure and EA Scales.

Results

During the intervention, all mothers began to use a more bodily-tactile modality in early play routines and in different communicative functions. They increased their use of anticipatory cues, noticing responses, and tactile signs. Moreover, the children were more emotionally available to their mothers during the intervention and follow-up compared to the baseline.

Conclusion

The results indicated that, during a short intervention, mothers could adopt a systematic use of the bodily-tactile modality in interactions with their children with VIAD. The results also suggest that, when mothers increased flexibility in communication channels, it was positively linked to their children's EA.

Gaze Orienting in the Social World: An Exploration of the Role Played by Caregiving Vocal and Tactile Behaviors in Infants with Visual Impairment and in Sighted Controls

Infant attention is a cognitive function that underlines sensory-motor integration processes at the interface between the baby and the surrounding physical and socio-relational environment, mainly with the caregivers. The investigation of the role of non-visual inputs (i.e., vocal and tactile) provided by the caregivers in shaping infants' attention in the context of visual impairment is relevant from both a theoretical and clinical point of view. This study investigated the social attention (i.e., gaze orientation) skills in a group of visually impaired (VI) and age-matched sighted controls (SCs) between 9 and 12 months of age. Moreover, the role of VI severity and maternal vocalizations and touch in shaping the social attention were investigated. Overall, 45 infants and their mothers participated in a video-recorded 4 min interaction procedure, including a play and a still-face episode. The infants' gaze orientation (i.e., mother-directed, object-directed, or unfocused) and the types of maternal vocalizations and touch (i.e., socio-cognitive, affective) were micro-analytically coded. Maternal vocalizations and touch were found to influence gaze orientation differently in VI infants compared SCs. Moreover, the group comparisons during the play episode showed that controls were predominantly oriented to the mothers, while VI infants were less socially oriented. Visual impairment severity did not emerge as linked with social attention. These findings contribute to our understanding of socio-cognitive developmental trajectories in VI infants and highlight the need for tailored interventions to promote optimal outcomes for VI populations.

Relationship between positive parenting and adolescents' depressive symptoms: Evidence from a Chinese research survey

BACKGROUND

Adolescents often carry their depression well into their adulthood. This creates perpetual difficulties for their family and society. Research on the relationship between positive parenting and adolescent depressive symptoms is rare. The protective effect of positive parenting on adolescent depressive symptoms also remains underexplored. Parents are a vital source of feedback that shapes adolescents' self-view in crucial ways.

AIMS

This study examines the latent relationships between four factors related to positive parenting and adolescent depressive symptoms.

METHOD

Using data from the Chinese Family Panel Studies (CFPS), Stata MP 17.0 was used for preliminary data processing and descriptive statistics. The structural equation model (SEM) was adopted to test the seven proposed hypotheses.

RESULTS

The study participants were 2,816 adolescents (52.34% male). The SEM showed that positive communication and parental praise can directly reduce depressive symptoms in adolescents (path coefficients of -0.24 and -0.13 [p < .001], respectively). Additionally, both positive communication and positive parent-adolescent interactions can reduce adolescents' depressive symptoms by heightening the intermediate factor of parental praise (path coefficients of 0.30 and 0.44 [p < .001], respectively). Conversely, positive parent-adolescent interactions did not negatively affect adolescents' depressive symptoms, as we hypothesized.

CONCLUSIONS

High level of positive parenting negatively predicts the level of depressive symptoms among adolescents. Specifically, positive communication, positive parent-adolescent communication, and parental praise are the main protective factors related to positive parenting for adolescents' depressive symptoms.

Children's total blindness as a risk factor for early parent-child relationships: preliminary findings from an Italian sample

Background

Vision provides crucial information for parent-child attunement that scaffolds social development from the first months of life. Congenital blindness might affect both parental wellbeing and children's behavior during parent-child interaction. In this study, we compared families of young children with total versus partial blindness to understand the link between residual vision, parenting stress and perceived social support, and children's behavior during parent-child interaction.

Methods

Participants were 42 white parents (21 fathers and 21 mothers) and their congenitally blind children (14 females, mean age = 14.81 months, SD = 10.46) with no co-occurring disability, recruited at the Robert Hollman Foundation rehabilitation centers in Italy. Parents' scores on the Parenting Stress Index and Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support questionnaires, as well as children's behaviors signaling joint engagement during video-recorded episodes of parent-child interaction, were compared between the Total Blindness (TB, n = 12 children with no light perception or light perception in the dark but no quantifiable visual acuity) and Partial Blindness (PB, n = 9 children with a residual visual acuity below 3/60) groups.

Results

We found that parents of TB children had higher parenting stress and lower perceived social support scores than parents of PB children. In fathers, total stress and stress linked to perceiving the child as difficult negatively correlated with perceived support from friends. There was no difference in the time TB and PB children spent displaying joint engagement behaviors during parent-child interaction. However, TB children directed their gaze and face less often toward their parents than PB children. We observed a trend of association between this behavior and maternal stress.

Conclusion

These preliminary results suggest that the complete absence of vision from birth has adverse effects on stress linked to parenting and parental perceived social support. These findings support the importance of early family-centered interventions that extend to the parents' communities and facilitate the parent-child dyad's communication through non-visual behaviors. Replication is warranted in larger and more diverse samples.

Envisioning translational hyperscanning: how applied neuroscience might improve family-centered care

From the very beginning of their life, human beings are immersed in a social and interactive environment that contributes to shaping their social and cognitive development under typical and at-risk conditions. In order to understand human development in its bidirectional relationship with the social environment, we need to develop a 'complexity-sensitive' approach in neuroscience. Recent advances have started to do so with the application of hyperscanning techniques which involve recording adult and child neural activity simultaneously and highlighting the presence of similar patterns of brain activity in the dyad. Numerous studies focused on typically developing children have been published in recent years with the application of this technique to different fields of developmental research. However, hyperscanning techniques could also be extremely beneficial and effective in studying development in atypical and clinical populations. Such application, namely translational hyperscanning, should foster the transition toward a two-brain translational neuroscience. In this paper, we envision how the application of hyperscanning to atypical and clinical child populations can inform family-centered care for children and their parents.

Case report: Dancing in the dark: A critical single case study engaging a blind father in the rehabilitation journey of his visually impaired child

Background

Face-to-face visual contact is a key component of the early parent-child interaction, therefore a visual impairment condition of the parent or the child represents a risk factor for dyadic patterns' development.

Aims

The study presents a critical single case of a blind father and a 18-month-old visually impaired child. The study aims to explore changes in the relational functioning of this dyad during an early family-centered intervention.

Methods and procedures

Ten parent-child sessions were videotaped and micro-analytically coded. Data were analyzed through a State Space Grid crossing child's social cues and types of father verbalizations.

Outcomes and results

Findings showed a stable increase in the amount of child social cues over time. Moreover, the dyad exhibited progressive changes in dyadic regulation, stability, and organization. The return time to the “active interaction” region of interest decreased progressively. A reduction was observed also for the time spent by the dyad in the region “no vocal contact.”

Conclusions and implications

This critical single case highlighted the benefits of parental engagement in early interventions for the dyadic regulation in parent-child interaction.

The porridge-like framework: A multidimensional guidance to support parents of children with developmental disabilities

Parents of children with developmental disabilities face many daily challenges that can lead to emotional and affective problems, difficulties in caregiving, and partial mental representations about themselves and their children. The multi-faceted nature of these parents' needs requires a multi-component approach that should include the analysis of priority support goals and the planning of tailored therapeutic actions. Despite different types of validated interventions are available, the choice of the most appropriate strategy to pursue a family-centered approach to support parents of infants with developmental disabilities is not obvious. In this scenario, we propose a multi-dimensional model, the porridge-like framework of parenting. It considers three interrelated domains in parents' experience - affective (A), behavioral (B), and cognitive (C) aspects - that are intertwined with the specific degree of the child's impairment (D). This ABCD model may provide professionals with pragmatically valid guidance to plan and deliver family-centered healthcare interventions. By covering the multi-dimensional nature of parenting challenges, it provides clinicians with conceptual categories to recognize the specific needs and to choose the most suitable therapeutic action to address them. In addition, it aims to promote an ethical approach to family-centered rehabilitation for children with developmental disabilities, maximizing the potentials of a collaborative assessment approach.