Investigation of the relationship between language development, sensory processing skills and parenting attitude in children with autism spectrum disorder

ASD is a neurodevelopmental disorder that can affect language development and sensory processing skills. Conditions such as developmental delays, economic reasons increase the stress level of parents of children with ASD. The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between language development, sensory processing skills and parenting attitudes in children with ASD. The ASD group consists of 30 children aged 3-5, and the control group consists of 30 children aged 3-5. Language development was evaluated with TELD-3, sensory processing skills were evaluated with Sensory Profile and parenting attitudes were evaluated with PAS. TELD-3, Sensory Profile and PAS scores were compared between the two groups. According to the results, statistically significant differences were found between the two groups in TELD-3 receptive language, expressive language and verbal language performance (p<0.05). In the Sensory Profile, statistically significant differences were found between the two groups in all sub-test, except for the "Sensory Processing Related to Endurance/Tone" and ''Modulation of Movement Affecting Activity Level'' sub-test (p<0.05). According to the results of PAS, the "Democratic" attitude scores of the ASD group have lower scores than the control group, while the "Authoritarian" and "Overprotective" attitude scores have significantly higher scores (p<0.05). There was a moderate positive correlation between the ASD group TELD-3 and Sensory Profile ''Auditory'', ''Visual", "Multisensory " processing and ''Modulation of Movement Affecting Activity Level''. A moderate positive relationship was found between the ASD group TELD-3 and PAS "Democratic", and a weak negative relationship was found between the "Authoritarian" attitude. According to these results, it has been found that sensory processing skills and parenting attitudes can affect language development in children with ASD. It is believed that evaluating sensory processing skills and parenting attitudes in the intervention process can contribute to the intervention process in children with ASD.