The invastigation of the effects of parental attitudes on socioemotional adjustment levels of 5-6 year old children with autism spectrum disorders

This research has been conducted to determine the relationship between parental attitudes and socio-emotional adaptation levels of 5-6 year old children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). In this framework, it has been analyzed that whether the parental attitudes and the socio-emotional adjustment of the children showed an alteration depending on the demographical factors.In this research, quantitative research methods formed by the questionnaire have been used. The population of this research consisted of the 5-6 year old children diagnosed with ASD and their parents in the district of Istanbul, Kadıkoy. The sampling of this research has been collected from 60 children arbitrarily chosen at the age of 5-6 diagnosed with ASD and their parents. In data collection process, ''Personal Information Form'', Parental Attitude Scale (PAS) and Marmara Socioemotional Adjustment Scale have been used. According to the result of the research, it has been observed that the parents between the ages of 36-40 are more authoritative than the parents between 41-45 and the state of their authoritative attitude increases depending on their education level. Another finding of the study was that the parents of children who start special education at the age of 3 were more democratic when compared to the parents of children who start special education at the age of 2. In the sub-dimension of Socially Appropriate Practices, the children of parents between the ages of 30-35 have scored higher than the children whose parents are between the ages of 36-40. Furthermore, in the sub-dimension of positive attitudes to the Social Environment, the scores have been observed higher in the children of families graduated from college than the children whose families had middle school education levels. Similarly, the scores of children whose families had been graduated from university are higher than the children whose families had middle-school education levels. As a result of correlation analysis, it has been determined that there is a negative relationship between the sub-scale of democratic attitude and socio-emotional adjustment while there is a positive relationship between the sub-scale of protective attitude and friendship interaction.