Usatenko H. Assisted communication as a factor of attachment in child-parent relations.

The paper presents the results of a theoretical and empirical study of the impact of assisted communication on attachment in child-parent relationships in families with children with communication disorders. The relevance of the research is determined both by today’s social challenges, caused by needs of families in social and psychological support, and by the priority in the state social policy regarding the comprehensive support of family forms of raising children. Since communication disorders in a child provoke both difficulties in language acquisition and disruption of the process of interpersonal interaction, research on assisted communication and social skills formation practices help to prevent social isolation and stigmatization of families raising children with communication disorders. The model and procedure of the formative experiment determined two-stage organization of the research and the choice of quantitative measurement methods. The independent variable in the study is the introduction of assisted communication using graphic symbols. The dependent variable is attachment indicators, namely closeness and conflict in child-parent relationships. The dynamics of children's communicative behavior was determined through parents' observations. At the preparatory stage, two methods were translated and adapted: the questionnaire "Child-Parent Relations Scale. Short form (CPRS-SF)" (Driscoll & Pianta, 2011) and the questionnaire Family Impact of Assistive Technology Scale for Augmentative and Alternative Communication, Short Version (FIATS - AAC 38), translated as "Questionnaire for determining the impact of the use of assistive technologies for alternative and alternative communication additional communication per family. Short form". The study is a formative experiment, which revealed statistically significant increase in closeness and decrease in conflict in families of experimental group as indicators of attachment according to the CPRS-SF questionnaire (Pianta, 2011), in cases where assisted communication was used. Assistance was carried out with the help of graphic symbols on cardboard cards, which the parents of the experimental group introduced into communication with the child during the four months of the study. There are no statistically significant changes in the results of the limited control and control groups. No statistically significant correlations between the indicators of the two scales of attachment with the presence of siblings or the composition of the family (both parents or one-parent family) were found. At the same time, these aspects may require deeper research in relation to the development of communication in a child with communication disorders. The age of the children was used in the study to equalize the composition of the samples, as well as to take into account the age-specific characteristics of the development of communication skills and the number of symbols the child possesses. It was shown that the use of communicative symbols increased among children in the experimental group. The scientific novelty of the obtained results is due to the understudied and interdisciplinary nature of the studied phenomena, because the topic of the influence of assisted communication on the attachment of parents and children, as well as the psychological features of communication in families where children with communication disorders grow up, are poorly described in scientific sources. For the first time, a theoretical model of the influence of assistance in communication on child-parent attachment was proposed. The novelty of our formative experiment also lies in highlighting assistance in communication with the help of graphic symbols as a separate factor of attachment. The results of the formative experiment are recommended for use by practical psychologists, education and social workers, researchers in the field of social psychology to study and support communication processes and the formation of attachment in families with children with communication disorders who use assisted communication.