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Association of Prosocial Behavior Between Mothers and Their Child with Autism Spectrum Disorder: The Mediating Role of Maternal Parenting

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Abstract

The relationship between maternal parenting and the prosocial behavior of a child with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) was tested cross-sectionally (Study 1) and longitudinally (Study 2). In Study 1, maternal prosocial behavior was moderately associated with child behavior, and maternal positive parenting completely mediated this relationship. In Study 2, we found that the association between guidance (T1) and maternal prosocial behavior (T2) was significant, as were the longitudinal and mutual associations between high control and child prosocial behavior. However, a mediating effect of any component of parenting was not found in the longitudinal data. These results suggest an important role for maternal parenting in the development of prosocial behavior in children with ASD.

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Funding

Funding was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 81761128035, 81930095), Shanghai Municipal Commission of Health and Family Planning (Grant Nos. 2018BR33, 2017EKHWYX-02, GWV-10.1-K07), Shanghai Shenkang Hospital Development Center (Grant No. 16CR2025B), Shanghai Clinical Key Subject Construction Project (Grant No. shslczdzk02902), Shanghai Committee of Science and Technology (Grant No. 19410713500), Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Major Project (Grant No. 2018SHZDZX01), Key Scientific and Technological Projects of Guangdong Province (Grant No. 2018B030335001), Collaborative Innovation Program of Shanghai Municipal Health Commission (Grant No. 2020CXJQ01), National Human Genetic Resources Sharing Service Platform (Grant No. 2005DKA21300), Xinhua Hospital of Shanghai JiaoTong University School of Medicine (Grant No. 2018YJRC03).

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Author notes

  1. Yun Tang

    Present address: Faculty of Education, Yunnan Normal University, Kunming, 650500, People’s Republic of China

  2. Yun Tang and Ying Yang have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Developmental and Behavioral Pediatric Department & Child Primary Care Department, Brain and Behavioral Research Unit of Shanghai Institute for Pediatric Research, and MOE-Shanghai Key Laboratory for Children’s Environmental Health, Xinhua Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, 200092, People’s Republic of China

    Yun Tang, Liangliang Chen, Xin Liu, Shining Deng, Yuan Dai, Yun Fan & Fei Li

  2. Shanghai Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Psychological Crisis Intervention, Institute of Brain and Education Innovation, School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200062, People’s Republic of China

    Ying Yang & Lijuan Cui

  3. Department of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, Fujian Children’s Hospital, Fuzhou, 350014, People’s Republic of China

    Liangliang Chen

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  1. Yun Tang
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Contributions

YT, YY, FL and LC designed this research, LC, XL, SD, YD and YF collected data, YT and YY analyzed data, and wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Fei Li or Lijuan Cui.

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The study was approved by the Ethical Committee at Xinhua Hospital and conducted in accordance with the relevant guidelines and regulations.

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Tang, Y., Yang, Y., Chen, L. et al. Association of Prosocial Behavior Between Mothers and Their Child with Autism Spectrum Disorder: The Mediating Role of Maternal Parenting. J Autism Dev Disord 53, 2283–2296 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-022-05487-1

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