Life under lockdown for children with autism spectrum disorder: Insights from families in South Africa

Childhood conduct problems and parent-child talk during social and nonsocial play contexts: a naturalistic home-based experiment

Parent-child interactions are a critical pathway to emotion socialization, with disruption to these processes associated with risk for childhood behavior problems. Using computational linguistics methods, we tested whether (1) play context influenced parent-child socioemotional language, and (2) child conduct problems or callous-unemotional traits were associated with patterns of socioemotional or nonsocial language across contexts. Seventy-nine parent-child dyads (children, 5-6 years old) played a socioemotional skills ("social context") or math ("nonsocial context") game at home. We transcribed and analyzed game play, which had been audio recorded by participants. The social context elicited more socioemotional and cognitive words, while the nonsocial context elicited more mathematical words. The use of socioemotional language by parents and children was more strongly correlated in the social context, but context did not moderate the degree of correlation in cognitive or mathematical word use between parents and children. Children with more conduct problems used fewer socioemotional words in the social context, while children with higher callous-unemotional traits used fewer cognitive words in both contexts. We highlight the role of context in supporting socioemotionally rich parent-child language interactions and provide preliminary evidence for the existence of linguistic markers of child behavior problems. Our results also inform naturalistic assessments of parent-child interactions and home-based interventions for parents and children facing socioemotional or behavioral challenges.

[A review of research on psychological and behavioral problems in children with autism spectrum disorder during the coronavirus disease 2019 epidemic]

Since December 2019, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been rapidly spreading worldwide and affecting the physical and mental health of the general population. It may have even more serious potential harm to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This paper provides a literature review on the psychological and behavioral problems experienced by children with ASD during the COVID-19 epidemic, as well as the factors influencing these issues. The findings of this review can serve as a basis for clinical research on ASD children.