The Autism Society Event and Education Recordings Archive

In this interactive session, participate in the demonstration and assessment of joint attention skills. Additionally, learn strategies to teach individuals to initiate others, pay attention to what others are attending to, and follow eye gaze and/or gestures to make social connections and communicate. In interactive presentation, participants gain an understanding of the importance of individuals with autism developing skills beyond just making eye contact.  Moving beyond eye gaze, parents and professionals should teach skills that help individuals share experiences. This session begins with an introduction to early developmental milestones and how they differ in children with autism and typically developing children, in the area of nonverbal communication and social skill development. This is followed by a review of research on the effect of early intervention for children with autism on core skill development as it pertains to nonverbal communication, language, and social affect development. Participants will learn about joint attention, which refers to the capacity of individuals to coordinate attention with a social partner in relation to an object or event. Participants will engage in activities that simulate the use of joint attention to ensure a solid understanding of the concept. Participants will be introduced to and practice several easy assessment tools that can be utilized to assess core skills. Because teaching children with autism to engage in joint attention has been shown to lead to increases in other non-targeted behaviors such as play, imitation, language, social interactions and empathy, how to construct experiences and intervention strategies will be highlighted. Particular focus will be spent on strategies to enhance the development of these skills while teaming and collaborating with families so that together we can “realize the vision” of positive outcomes for children with autism. The topic of joint attention is important as early nonverbal social and communication skills foster social awareness, which is key to higher interactive skills such as social-communicative reciprocity, experience sharing, conversation, social play and community engagement. Joint attention is a pivotal skill in early intervention as it leads to gains in other non-targeted skills (imitation, play, & empathy). The implications of joint attention challenges is if a child lacks these skills, part or all of messages from others will be lost and they hinder a child’s development in language acquisition and socialization. Based on the theory that joint attention is a core deficit in autism that affects later development of social-communication behaviors, it is an important issue to explore. Understanding joint attention is relevant to professionals and families of all backgrounds because collaboration on development of this skill has been shown through research to help young children with autism with acquisition and generalization. This session contributes to best practice and advances the field of autism spectrum disorders as research has demonstrated that with direct intervention of joint attention skills, children with autism are able engage in a variety of social interactions at a more age appropriate level and increase language use.

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