broader autism phenotype and communication skills in parents of children with autism

Introduction: this study aimed to determine the communication profile of parents ofchildren with autism spectrum disorders (asd) and parents of typically developingchildren (tdc).materials and methods: broad autism phenotype and communication skills weremeasured using the broad autism phenotype questionnaire (bapq) and the queendomcommunication skill test (qcst) in parents of children with asd and parents of tdc.participants included 346 parents of children with asd and parents of tdc. in the asdgroup, participants included 172 parents (76 fathers and 96 mothers) of children diagnosedwith asd. the tdc parent group included parents 174 (85 fathers and 89 mothers). inthe autism group, at least one child had autism and in the opposite group, the child hadno psychological problems. two-way analysis of variance (anova) was performed toexamine the effects of group (tdc, asd) and gender (male, female) on study variables.results: a significant group-gender interaction was observed for bapq total scores(f(1,342)=4.28, p=0.039); mothers of children with asd reported higher bapq total scoresthan mothers of tdc (p=0.006), and mothers of tdc reported lower bapq total scoresthan fathers of tdc (p<0.001). a significant group-gender interaction was also observed forqcst total scores (f(1,342)=11.66, p<0.001); mothers of children with asd reported lowerqcst total scores than mothers of tdc (p<0.001), and among parents of tdc, mothershad higher levels of qcst total scores than fathers (p<0.001). a negative significantcorrelation was observed between bapq and qcst total scores (r=-0.499, p<0.001).conclusion: the results of this study showed a difference between parents’ communicationskills in the two groups. parents of children with asd have more communication characteristicsof autism than the control group, fathers in the asd group scored higher in the total scores ofautism communication traits and some subtests which require further research in this area.