Affect Diathesis Hypothesis

Affect Diathesis Hypothesis

The Role of Emotions in the Core Deficit in Autism and in the Development of Intelligence and Social Skills

by Stanley I. Greenspan, MD

Summary: 

The affect diathesis hypothesis, developed by Dr. Stanley Greenspan, proposes that affect, our emotional interests, desires, and intentions, plays a central role in organizing development. Through emotionally meaningful interactions, children connect their feelings and intentions with movement, communication, and thinking. These connections support increasingly complex capacities for shared problem solving, language, imagination, and abstract thought.

In his paper, Greenspan uses the word “diathesis” to mean “spread,” describing how affect extends into and gives meaning to different developmental capacities. A child’s desire to share an experience, for example, can organize a sequence of gestures, actions, and words. Affect thus helps connect capacities such as motor planning, sensory processing, and symbol formation with personal meaning and purposeful engagement.

Greenspan hypothesized that some autistic children experience biologically based challenges in connecting affect or intent with motor planning, sequencing, and emerging symbols. This hypothesis helps explain DIR’s emphasis on relationships and emotionally meaningful interactions. By following a person’s interests, respecting individual processing differences, and supporting reciprocal engagement, DIRFloortime® seeks to strengthen these connections and create opportunities for development and learning.

Abstract:

In this paper we will explore the role of affect in the core deficit in autism and in the development of intelligence and social skills. We discuss how children with autistic spectrum disorders may uniquely, for biological reasons, miss a critical developmental capacity, the ability to connect affect or intent to motor planning and sequencing capacities as well as symbol formation and, therefore, have a difficult time engaging in the long reciprocal chains of affective interaction so necessary for creative and abstract thinking and high-level social skills (Affect Diathesis Hypothesis). We will also discuss how these same affective interactions underlie intelligence and social development. Additionally, we explain that to improve assessments and interventions for children with a variety of challenges including autistic spectrum disorders, it is imperative to appreciate the role of affective interchanges in disordered and healthy development. Finally, we explain that to fully operationalize the role of affective interaction and the Affect Diathesis Hypothesis for the assessment and intervention process, we have formulated the Developmental, Individual-Difference, Relationship-Based model (DIR) (Greenspan, 1992, 1997b; Greenspan & Wieder, 1997, 1998, 1999).

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