ABSTRACT
Parent's interaction with their young mentally handicapped children is a potent source of developmental stimulus. In terms of method, many studies have looked at parent's behaviour separately from the children behaviour. Recent studies of pre-term infants have highlighted a number of issues of interest to the study of young mentally handicapped children and their parents. An early study of mother-child interaction with infants of atypical behaviour was exemplary in its awareness of the conceptual problems of such research, even though its observation method was primitive. Greenberg discussed general problems in child-rearing research such as the lack of study of what actually happens and problems in sampling. Fathers of handicapped children have been even more invisible in parent-child interaction studies than they were in studies of parent's attitudes and feelings. Cheseldine recorded play sessions at home, and found that mothers and fathers differed only on use of expansions of child's utterances.
