The Autism Society Event and Education Recordings Archive

The purpose of this session will be to present a model for evaluating children’s responsiveness to the joint attention bids of an adult (RJA), as well as, their initiation of joint attention with an adult (IJA). The session will also include components of a curriculum developed by the authors to teach joint attention skills to children with autism. Joint attention is recognized as one of the earliest forms of communication in young children. Joint attention involves the coordinated attention between a social partner and an event in the environment. For young children episodes of joint attention provide the context for communication with others. These reciprocal interactions are characterized by glances and gestures and are viewed by many as critical to the development of symbolic language. It has been demonstrated that children with autism often manifest deficits in joint attention.

We have developed a highly structured assessment protocol with objective behavioral measures for evaluating children's responsiveness to the joint attention bids of an adult (RJA), as well as, their initiation of joint attention with an adult (IJA). The assessment was administered to 30 children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders upon entry into an early intensive preschool program and a second time after one year of intervention. Children ranged in age upon entry from 2 to 4 years old. These data are compared to typically developing age-matched children on the same assessment. Interobserver agreement was high for all behavioral measures. Results showed that joint attention responses were high for all typically developing children but generally lower for children with autism. Many children with autism improved after one year of treatment, while performance remained the same for others. An analysis of response patterns and overall profiles of the children revealed several variables that could have influenced their performance.

We will also describe a curriculum sequence we have developed to teach joint attention to children with autism who are enrolled in the preschool program. This curriculum has been effective in establishing joint attention for many children. For a subset of those children, who did not make gains in joint attention after one year of early intensive behavioral intervention, we will present procedures we have developed to specifically teach responding to the joint attention bids of an adult. These results extend previous research and have implications for the behavioral treatment of joint attention.

Content Area: Social Skills