effect of intervention training on the mother-child relationship in children with autism: a control trial

Background: the disability to recognize emotional and mental states in others’ facial expressions is acknowledged as one of the major developmental-behavioral problems in children with autism. therefore, it is necessary to study the effect of facial emotion recognition training on the interaction skills of children with autism. objectives: the aim of this study was to investigate the effect of emotional facial recognition on the mother-child relationship in children with autism. methods: the present clinical trial was conducted based on a pre-test post-test design. children aged 6-12 years with high- or moderate-functioning autism were assigned to two groups using the random block sampling method. children in the intervention group were trained in 10 45-min sessions each week for 10 weeks using 40 images related to four situations of happiness, sadness, anger, and fear. the mother-child relationship questionnaire was completed one day before and one day after the intervention in both groups by the research assistant. data were analyzed with spss software version 22. results: emotional state training improved the mother-child relationship in the intervention group. there was also a statistically significant difference between the total scores of the mother-child relationship in the intervention group and the control group (p <0.000). conclusions: the findings of this study suggest that teaching facial emotion recognition to children with autism can be very effective in promoting mother-child interaction and consequently, their interaction with society. health officials can benefit from the findings of this study to improve facial recognition and consequently, the mother-child relationship.