The Influence Of Parents On Prosocial Behavior Of Children With ASD And Its Brain Mechanism

Prosocial behavior helps children establish healthy interpersonal relationships and promote their socialization so that they can have a foothold in a pluralistic,dynamic and complex world.As the most important caregivers of children,parents play an important role in the development of children's prosocial behavior.The prosocial skills of children with autism spectrum disorder(ASD)are still at a low level in the whole childhood and adolescence compared with those of typical developmental(TD)children.Therefore,it is still not clear whether there are special patterns of prosocial behavior development influenced by parents.In addition,due to the characteristics of multiple risk factors,multiple symptoms and strong heterogeneity of ASD,there may be great differences in prosocial development level,development mode and related neural mechanisms within different ASD subgroups.These questions need to be answered step by step.This thesis first discusses the relationship between parents' prosocial level and ASD children's prosocial level,and the possible role of parenting style.Next,we tried to divide ASD children into subgroups(subtypes)according to the degree of symptoms and prosocial level,and explore whether there are differences in brain function related to prosocial behavior and its relationship with parental factors in different subgroups.Finally,the perspective of the study has shifted from the potential long-term influence of parents to the real-time on-site influence-through the experiment to test the influence of parents on children's specific prosocial behavior(cooperation)behavior and brain activity.This thesis includes three parts,consisting of six studies.The first part(Study 1)is a survey using the scale as the research tool.Based on the cross-sectional data,study 1a(N = 357)found that positive parenting style can mediate the relationship between parents' prosocial behavior tendency and 4.0-8.4-year-old ASD children's prosocial behavior tendency,but no similar effect was found for 2.4-4.0-year-old ASD children;Study 1b(N = 128)tried to verify the results of study 1a based on longitudinal data.No significant mediating effect was found in any dimension of parenting style probably due to some limitations of data collection.On this basis,study 1c(N = 526)firstly verified the mediation effect of parenting style on the relationship between mother's prosocial behavior tendency and ASD children's prosocial behavior tendency based on the expanded cross-sectional data sample.Based on this,a serial mediation model was established for the negative emotion of mother relating to ASD children's prosocial level through her own prosocial level,parenting style.The second part(Study 2)is an exploratory study(N = 206)which combines behavioral assessment with functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging.According to symptom severity and prosocial level,ASD children were divided into three main subgroups(subtypes).Through the generalized linear models,we found that ASD severity,prosocial level and age had significant three-factor-interaction effects on the functional connectivity strength(FCS)of some "social network" brain regions,That is to say,the trend of FCS in some brain regions related to prosocial behavior varies with age in different subgroups.Furthermore,we found that parenting styles mediate the relationship between parents' prosocial level and ASD children's social related brain areas.This mediating effect is also different across subtypes and brain regions.The third part(Study 3)is a laboratory research based on near functional infrared spectrumscopy hyperscanning technology.Study 3a(N = 43)found that parents' strategy selection(delayed response strategy,immediate response strategy and no obvious strategy)can significantly affect their task performance and brain synchronization,and parental pressure and father's education level are related to their strategy selection.Study 3b(N = 71)further found that the level of parent-child cooperation of high functioning ASD children was almost the same as that of non-ASD children,and most of the parent-child cooperation strategies continued the parent-child cooperation strategy,but parents of ASD children used more delayed strategies than parents of non-ASD children.In particular,when parents of ASD children cooperate with their children,their reaction patterns are adjusted to a greater extent to make them more suitable for their children.Taken together,we can draw the following conclusions:(1)ASD restricts the development of prosocial behavior in children,not only in behavioral tendency,but also in the corresponding level of brain functional connectivity.(2)In general,parental parenting patterns not only mediate the relationship between their own prosocial level and ASD children's prosocial level,but also mediate the relationship between the former and ASD children's functional connectivity in social brain area.(3)In a prosocial task represented by cooperation,appropriate strategies and parents' adjustments are the key to ASD children's good task performance and brain synchronization.The above conclusions reflect the integration of behavioral level and neural activity level,and the unity of long-term effect and real-time effect,which provides some enlightenment for the development of prosocial behavior of ASD children and the practice of parenting style or parent-child interaction.