Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR
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J Intellect Disabil Res · Mar 2010
Parenting stress and coping styles in mothers and fathers of pre-school children with autism and Down syndrome.
The study examined the profile of stress in mothers and fathers of preschool children with autism, Down syndrome and typically developing children. A further aim was to assess the association between parenting stress and coping style. ⋯ The results indicated a higher level of stress in parents of children with autism. Additionally, an interaction effect was revealed between child diagnostic group and parent's gender for two scales of parenting stress: dependency and management and limits of family opportunities. Mothers of children with autism scored higher than fathers in parental stress; no such differences were found in the group of parents of children with Down syndrome and typically developing children. It was also found that parents of children with autism differed from parents of typically developing children in social diversion coping. Emotion-oriented coping was the predictor for parental stress in the samples of parents of children with autism and Down syndrome, and task-oriented coping was the predictor of parental stress in the sample of parents of typically developing children. The results strongly supported earlier findings on parenting stress in parents of children with autism. They also shed interesting light on the relationship between coping styles and parental stress.
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J Intellect Disabil Res · Mar 2010
Chronic pain in people with an intellectual disability: under-recognised and under-treated?
To examine the nature, prevalence and impact of chronic pain in adults with an intellectual disability (ID) based on carer report. ⋯ Given their increased risk for chronic pain, we concluded that pain in the ID population may be under-recognised and under-treated, especially in those with impaired capacity to communicate about their pain.
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J Intellect Disabil Res · Mar 2010
Understanding early communication signals in autism: a study of the perception of infants' cry.
Previous studies have highlighted that episodes of crying of children with autistic disorder (AD) were perceived as inexplicable from their parents who could not identify causative factors. These results supported the view of AD as related to a problem of expressing and sharing emotions. Moreover, no evidence has been presented on which characteristics of a cry episode influence the adult perception. Aim of our research is to investigate how acoustical features of crying episodes modulate their perception of infants with ASD compared with infants with typical development (TD) and infants with developmental delay (DD). ⋯ Our findings offer support for the hypothesis that acoustic characteristics of episodes of crying of children with autism, especially higher fundamental frequencies, may account for mental states of uneasiness in the listener.