Play with Me: How Fathers and Mothers Play with Their Preschoolers with Autism

first_pagesettingsOrder Article Reprints Open AccessArticle Play with Me: How Fathers and Mothers Play with Their Preschoolers with Autism by Silvia Perzolli 1,*,†ORCID,Arianna Bentenuto 1,†,Giulio Bertamini 2ORCID andPaola Venuti 1ORCID 1 Laboratory of Observation, Diagnosis, and Education (ODFLab), Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of Trento, 38068 Rovereto, Italy 2 Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Pitiè-Salpêtrière Hospital, Sorbonne University, 75651 Paris, France * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. † These authors contributed equally to this work. Brain Sci. 2023, 13(1), 120; https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci13010120 Submission received: 2 December 2022 / Revised: 28 December 2022 / Accepted: 9 January 2023 / Published: 10 January 2023 (This article belongs to the Section Developmental Neuroscience) Downloadkeyboard_arrow_down Review Reports Versions Notes Abstract (1) Background: Children can develop cognitive and social skills during play. Most research has focused on mothers, but the paternal features in interaction with children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are mainly unexplored. This study aimed to compare fathers’ and mothers’ interactive behaviors with their children with ASD to identify similarities and differences during playful exchanges. (2) Methods: A total of 72 mothers and 72 fathers of paired children with ASD (chronological age: M = 44.61 months; SD = 13.37) took part in this study. Data were collected during 10 min of video-recorded semi-structured interactions with mothers and fathers separately in interaction with their children. (3) Results: Mothers showed more symbolic play (W = 3537; p < 0.001) than fathers, who displayed higher levels of exploratory play (t(139.44) = −2.52; p = 0.013) compared to mothers. However, child cognitive functioning impacts maternal play but not the father’s play characteristics. (4) Conclusions: Highlighting mother–child and father–child features may have important service delivery implications for implementing personalized parental-based interventions based on the strengths and weaknesses of both caregivers in a complementary system.