Assessing the relationship between affective responsivity and social interaction in children with pervasive developmental disorder.
A child's emotional responses shift by social partner—mom, teacher, stranger—so assess across all three before writing goals.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team used a new tool called KIDIES to watch how kids with PDD show feelings. They filmed each child with mom, teacher, and a stranger. Then they scored every smile, frown, and laugh.
They also filmed kids without PDD for comparison. The goal was to see if PDD kids act differently with each person.
What they found
Kids with PDD showed the least emotion when they were with mom. With teachers, their responses were all over the place—some kids looked typical, others still flat.
The tool caught wide swings that older checklists missed. This tells us PDD kids are not just "low affect"—they change by partner.
How this fits with other research
English et al. (1995) used cluster analysis to split PDD into four behavior groups. Cordova et al. (1993) adds the missing piece: those groups may also differ by who is in the room.
Cox et al. (2015) later showed that kids who fail harder thinking tasks also fail social tasks. The KIDIES data hint that social-partner context could be another layer to check.
Mae Simcoe et al. (2018) reviewed links between home stress and IDD. Cordova et al. (1993) did not ask about violence, but the low affect with mom might signal stress at home—something to probe in intake.
Why it matters
When you assess a child, film them with more than one adult. If affect is flat only with mom, dig into home stress. If it is flat with everyone, target broader social skills. Use KIDIES or a simple emotion checklist during natural play to track change after your plan starts.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
An investigation of children with pervasive developmental disorder (PDD) was conducted using a new instrument, the Kiddie-Infant Descriptive Instrument for Emotional States (KIDIES). The KIDIES rates several affective and behavioral dimensions based on facial, vocal, gestural, and postural cues. The study's goals were to determine whether the KIDIES could detect individual differences in responsivity among the PDD subjects; to ascertain the KIDIES' sensitivity in identifying group differences between PDD subjects and control children with other developmental disorders. Children were videotaped during episodes with three partners: the mother, a familiar female teacher, an unfamiliar male doctor. Episodes were scored using the KIDIES. PDD subjects were most severely impaired during the Mother episode in comparison to the controls. Equally as striking was the within-episode heterogeneity among PDD subjects. During the Teacher episode, PDD subjects were twice as variable in interpersonal response as the controls.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 1993 · doi:10.1007/BF01046225