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Biomedical subjects

R Peter Hobson

Publications and source records attributed to R Peter Hobson.

12 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2007

What facilitates social engagement in preschool children with autism?

We studied the association between an adult's behavior and episodes of social engagement (ESEs) in young children with autism during play-based assessment. ESEs were defined as events in which a child looked toward the adult's face and simultaneously showed an additional form of communicative behavior. The adult's behavior before each ESE, and before time-sampled control periods, was rated using Coding Active Sociability in Preschoolers with Autism (CASPA). As predicted, adult musical/motoric activity, communications that followed the child's focus of attention, scaffolding through social routines, imitations of the child, and adult repetitions were significantly more prevalent before ESEs, but cognitive assessment activities, adult inactivity, and "ignoring" were significantly less prevalent. We consider the implications for understanding the developmental psychopathology of autism.

Autistic Disorder↗
PubMed2006

On intersubjective engagement in autism: a controlled study of nonverbal aspects of conversation.

Does autism involve a deficit in intersubjective engagement with other persons? We studied nonverbal communication in children and adolescents with and without autism (n = 12 per group), group-matched for chronological age and verbal mental age, during 3 min of a videotaped interview. In keeping with previous studies, there were only subtle but potentially revealing group differences on behavioral ratings. Participants with autism made fewer head-shakes/nods (but not smiles) when the interviewer was talking, and the interviewer made fewer head-shakes/nods when participants were talking. Yet there were marked group differences on reliable 'subjective' ratings of (a) affective engagement and (b) the smoothness of reciprocal interaction. We interpret the findings in terms of a group difference in identification between conversational partners.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2005

Personal relatedness and attachment in infants of mothers with borderline personality disorder.

The principal aim of this study was to assess personal relatedness and attachment patterns in 12-month-old infants of mothers with borderline personality disorder (BPD). We also evaluated maternal intrusive insensitivity toward the infants in semistructured play. We videotaped 10 mother-infant dyads with borderline mothers and 22 dyads where the mothers were free from psychopathology, in three different settings: a modification of Winnicott's Set Situation in which infants faced an initially unresponsive ("still-face") stranger, who subsequently tried to engage the infant in a game of give and take; the Strange Situation of Ainsworth and Wittig; and a situation in which mothers were requested to teach their infants to play with miniature figures and a toy train. In relation to a set of a priori predictions, the results revealed significant group differences as follows: (a) compared with control infants, toward the stranger the infants of mothers with BPD showed lower levels of "availability for positive engagement," lower ratings of "behavior organization and mood state," and a lower proportion of interpersonally directed looks that were positive; (b) in the Strange Situation, a higher proportion (8 out of 10) of infants of borderline mothers were categorized as Disorganized; and (c) in play, mothers with BPD were rated as more "intrusively insensitive" toward their infants. The results are discussed in relation to hypotheses concerning the interpersonal relations of women with BPD, and possible implications for their infants' development.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Symbolic play in congenitally blind children.

There is controversy over the existence and nature of blind children's limitations in symbolic play. In this study we tested 13 5- to 9-year-old congenitally blind children for the ability to symbolize when an adult provided scaffolding for their play. The blind children were selected on the basis that they did not have the syndrome of autism, and they comprised two groups matched for age (MA) and verbal ability on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children who contrasted in their ability to engage in social relations. We also tested a group of sighted children who were MA matched with the more socially able blind children. On the basis of an hypothesis about the social-developmental sources of symbolic play deficits in congenitally blind children, we predicted differences between the socially able and socially impaired groups of blind children in the following respects: the attribution of symbolic meanings to play materials, the ascription of individual roles to play figures, and the anchorage of play in the scenario as presented by the adult. The results accorded with these predictions. Whereas the more socially able blind children showed symbolic play that was very similar to that of sighted children, the MA- and IQ-matched socially impaired blind children were limited in the three aspects of their play. On the other hand, even the socially impaired children showed instances of symbolizing. The findings suggest a way to reconcile conflicting reports of symbolic play deficits in young blind children, and may be relevant for explaining the association between autism and congenital blindness.

Affect↗
PubMed2005

Foundations for self and other: a study in autism.

There is controversy over the basis for young children's experience of themselves and other people as separate yet related individuals, each with a mental perspective on the world - and over the nature of corresponding deficits in autism. Here we tested a form of self-other connectedness (identification) in children with and without autism, who were group-matched according to CA (approximately 6 to 16 years) and verbal MA (approximately 2 1/2 to 14 years), and therefore IQ. We gave two forms of a novel 'sticker test' in which children needed to communicate to another person where on her body she should place her sticker-badge. Across the trials of Study 1, all of the non-autistic children pointed to their own bodies at least once, but over half the children with autism failed to point to themselves at all, even though they communicated successfully in other ways. In Study 2, where a screen was introduced to hide the tester's body, group differences in the children's communicative self-orientated gestures were most marked after the tester had 'modelled' a point-to-herself gesture in communicating to the child. Our interpretation is that autism involves a relative failure to adopt the bodily-anchored psychological and communicative stance of another person. We suggest that this process of identification is essential to self-other relations and grounds young children's developing understanding of minds.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2005

Working in the transference: clinical and research perspectives.

The aim of this paper is to address a matter that has been noted, but not adequately confronted, in the psychotherapy research literature--that different psychoanalytic psychotherapists mean very different things by the expression transference interpretations. We explore the matter in three ways: firstly, by providing a brief overview of clinical perspectives on transference interpretations; secondly, by looking at examples of transference interpretations provided by researchers who have studied this form of clinical intervention; and thirdly, by reporting an empirical study of the quality, frequency, and distribution of transference interpretations employed by a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in the course of three routine psychodynamic assessment interviews in the National Health Service (NHS). We emphasize that the meaning of a clinical concept such as transference interpretation is grounded in a set of therapeutic principles and practices that are difficult to characterize by means of a succinct definition. It follows that we should be circumspect about generalizing from research on the therapeutic effectiveness of transference interpretations when what is meant may differ widely from study to study.

Biomedical Research↗
PubMed2004

Maternal sensitivity and infant triadic communication.

BACKGROUND AND METHOD: The aim of this study was to examine whether a mother's sensitivity towards her one-year-old infant is related to the infant's propensity to engage in 'triadic' relations--that is, to orientate to an adult's engagement with objects and events in the world, for example in sharing experiences with an adult. In order to determine that any effects were specific to infants' behaviour in the interpersonal domain, we also tested their performance on tests of understanding means-ends relations and object permanence. RESULTS: The results were that high maternal sensitivity and low intrusiveness correlated with high levels of infant triadic interpersonal engagement with a stranger vis-a-vis performance on the non-social tasks. There was also suggestive evidence that maternal sensitivity might be related to infants' propensity to share experiences with the mother. Exploratory analyses revealed that these findings held up when the effects of maternal socio-economic status and ethnic group were taken into account; and there was some indication that the effects of maternal intrusiveness on infant profiles of performance were more marked for mothers who did not have a partner. CONCLUSION: There is a specific relation between maternal sensitivity and one-year-old infants' propensity to engage with someone else in relation to the world.

Adult↗
PubMed2003

The pathogenesis of autism: insights from congenital blindness.

There is substantial heterogeneity in the aetiology and clinical presentation of autism. So how do we account for homogeneity in the syndrome? The answer to this question will be critical for any attempt to trace the links between brain pathology and the psychological disabilities that characterize autism. One possibility is that the source of homogeneity in autism is not to be found 'in the child', but rather in dysfunction of the system constituted by child-in-relation-to-other. We have been exploring this hypothesis through the study of congenitally blind children, among whom features of autism, and the syndrome of autism itself, are strikingly common. To justify such an approach, one needs to establish that the clinical features in blind children have qualities that are indeed 'autistic-like'. We conducted systematic observations of the social interactions of two matched groups of congenitally blind children who do not have autism, rating their social engagement, emotional tone, play and language during three sessions of free play in the school playground. The qualities of social impairment in the more disabled children were similar to those in sighted children with autism. Additional evidence came from independent ratings of the children in a different play setting: on the childhood autism rating scale (CARS), the socially impaired children had 'autistic-like' abnormalities in both social and non-social domains. If we can determine the way in which congenital blindness predisposes to features of autism, we shall be in a better position to trace the developmental pathways that lead to the syndrome in sighted children.

Autistic Disorder↗
PubMed2003

'Still-face' interactions between mothers with borderline personality disorder and their 2-month-old infants.

BACKGROUND: There is evidence that psychopathology in mothers may be associated with dysfunctional mother-infant interactions. AIMS: To investigate mother-infant relations when mothers have borderline personality disorder. METHOD: Eight mothers with borderline personality disorder and twelve mothers without psychiatric disorder were videotaped interacting with their 2-month-old infants in three successive phases of interaction: face-to-face play; an episode when the mother adopted a 'still face' and was unreactive; and a period when play interactions were resumed. The videotapes were rated by judges blind to the diagnostic group of the mother. RESULTS: The mothers with borderline personality disorder were more intrusively insensitive towards their infants. During the still-face period, their infants showed increased looking away and dazed looks. Following this, mother-infant interactions were less satisfying and their infants showed dazed looks and lowering of affect. CONCLUSIONS: The diagnosis of borderline personality disorder is associated with a particular pattern of mother-infant interaction. The infants' responses to the still-face challenge might suggest dysfunctional self-regulation, but the developmental significance remains to be assessed.

Affect↗
PubMed2002

Cognitive and social factors in the development of infants with Down syndrome.

Infants and young children with Down syndrome can be engaging and affectionate. It seems that in the early months of life their personal relations may be relatively 'spared' the effects of limitations in their capacities for information-processing. Yet how far is this the case as development proceeds? In this paper we discuss some ways in which social and cognitive development interact and mutually influence one another over the first year or so of life, and present preliminary findings from a longitudinal study of infants with and without Down syndrome. The evidence suggests that the development of 'triadic' (person-person-world) social interactions may be affected by limited information-processing capacities in infants with Down syndrome, through a complex socially-mediated developmental trajectory.

Attention↗