Parent-child interaction: A micro-level sequential approach in children with a significant cognitive and motor developmental delay.
Kids with big cognitive-motor delays wait for you to move first, so stack your social bids and watch for the echo.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team watched tiny clips of parent-child play. All kids had big delays in thinking and moving.
They coded who did what second-by-second. They wanted maps of how social moves start and end.
What they found
Parents almost always fired the first social shot. Kids rarely looked or touched on their own.
When parents smiled, pointed, or spoke, kids sometimes echoed the move. Nothing happened without that spark.
How this fits with other research
Van Keer et al. (2020) followed the same families longer. They saw a back-and-forth loop inside each play date. Parent move boosts child move, then child move nudges parent again. The 2019 snap-shot missed that loop because it never watched the same family twice.
Vernon (2014) worked with autistic preschoolers and saw the same bidirectional dance, but only when teachers wove social cues into play. Without those cues the dance stopped. Both papers say the same thing: adult input drives child social behavior, not the other way around.
de Jonge et al. (2025) went a step further. They trained parents of autistic toddlers and raised high-quality joint engagement. Their trial shows you can turn the descriptive pattern into real change if you coach the first move.
Why it matters
Your client may sit silent unless you start the game. Use big, clear social bids first. Think point-touch-smile all at once. Watch for the tiny echo back, then bid again. Chain those loops and you build the dance that Ines saw missing.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Open session with a triple cue: lean in, point to toy, smile and name it. Wait three seconds, then repeat.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND & AIMS: Previous research indicates that young children with a significant cognitive and motor developmental delay show low levels of interactive engagement, their parents are generally responsive towards them and these variables are positively correlated. Adapting a micro-level approach, we aim to go beyond macro-level and correlational analyses by charting the frequency, intra-individual co-occurrence and inter-individual temporal dependency of specific interactive behaviors. METHODS & PROCEDURES: Twenty-nine parent-child dyads (with children aged 6-59 months) were video-taped during a 15-minute unstructured play situation. Based on a self-developed coding scheme, interactive behaviors were coded continuously and analyzed using a three-step sequential analysis approach. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: Parents and children systematically combine either more socially-oriented or more object-oriented behaviors. Socially-oriented behaviors are less frequent in children, especially looking at and touching the partner occurs less. Socially- and object-oriented behavioral clusters are generally independent from each other and instigate/maintain the same type of behaviors in the interaction partner. While children's socially oriented behavior(al cluster)s seem to need a parental 'trigger', parents will more often independently engage with their child despite low child responsiveness. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: Further intervention-oriented research is needed to confirm this study's results and translate them into concrete guidelines for parents.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2019 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2018.11.008