EFFECTS OF VIDEO MODELING ON TEACHING BIDS FOR JOINT ATTENTION TO CHILDREN WITH AUTISM

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of video modeling to teach children with autism to initiate bids for joint attention. The video model consisted of a child demonstrating three components of a bid for joint attention with an adult conversational partner: orienting toward the object, emitting a vocal statement, and eye gaze shift toward unique objects in the environment. Results indicated that video modeling alone was effective in teaching all components of joint attention for two of the three children, whereas video modeling plus in vivo prompting was effective for the third participant. Further, bids for joint attention did not generalize across novel items for any of the participants. Results are discussed in terms of the social relevance and validity of the use of video modeling to teach a complex social behavior such as bids for joint attention. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Attention and joint attention in preschool children with autism

Three experiments examined the role of attention in explaining dyadic (child-adult) and triadic (child-adult-object) joint attention difficulties in autism. Experiments 1 and 2 investigated children's ability to orient to an adult's attention bid and to follow the direction of a human or nonhuman cue. Experiment 3 tested ability to disengage and shift attention to objects. Results showed autism-specific difficulties at both dyadic and triadic levels. Children with autism were less responsive than developmentally delayed controls in orienting to attention bids and in following a human head-turn cue yet had no difficulty in shifting attention and were faster overall in orienting to targets. Results suggest a specific developmental delay in which children with autism rely on the presence of objects in the visual field to guide action. The relation between this problem and autistic children's difficulties with human communicative signals is discussed.     

Caregiver‐mediated joint attention intervention

Joint attention is a pivotal social communication skill often absent or impaired in young children with autism spectrum disorder. Joint attention is the shared and alternating attention of two individuals on an object or event, and has implications for later communication and social communication skills. This study used a concurrent multiple‐baseline design across 3 caregiver–child dyads to train caregivers to teach response to joint attention behaviors to their 3–6 years old children with moderate to severe autism spectrum disorder. Caregivers were trained on strategies including prompting, time delay, and elements of naturalistic teaching and implemented the intervention in brief 10‐min sessions 2–3 times per week. Results indicate parent mastery of intervention and substantial increase in child response to joint attention behaviors both prompted and independent. Implications for practice and areas for future research are discussed.     

Teaching Joint Attention to Children with Autism Through A Sibling‐Mediated Behavioral Intervention

Joint attention is pivotal to the development of complex social skills and language, and many individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders display deficits in this domain. Behavioral interventions targeting joint attention are evidenced to be effective in teaching these skills to young children with autism, but these treatments have traditionally been implemented by adults in structured settings. Concerns regarding the generalizability of skills acquired under such conditions have been raised. Four typically developing children were trained to implement a joint attention intervention to their siblings with autism in the home. Joint attention was measured pre‐treatment and post‐treatment during play sessions and during a structured, adult‐mediated assessment to evaluate maintenance and generalization. Gains in responding to joint attention were observed for all four participants; gains in initiations were observed in three participants. Rates of imitation and behavioral requests also increased in structured and naturalistic settings. This study supports the efficacy of siblings as interventionists to target complex social skills in the natural environment. The implications of these findings for treatments targeting joint attention and for siblings as interventionists are discussed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An operant approach to teaching joint attention skills to children with autism

A lack of joint attention skills may constitute a core impairment in autism. In the present study, a training protocol was developed, based on the literature on joint attention and on behavioral interventions. The training was organized into a sequence of three main parts respectively aimed at establishing each of the following skills: (1) responding to joint attention bids, (2) engaging in turn‐taking activities based on joint attention skills, and (3) initiating joint attention. Two novel components were incorporated in the training: (a) a discrimination training procedure aimed at establishing the adult's nods as conditioned reinforcers and (b) tasks based on turn‐taking, where joint attention skills were targeted and reinforced. The study was conducted according to a single‐subject experimental design, in which joint attention skills were measured before and after intervention, using the “behavioral assessment of joint attention.” Four 3.5–5.5 year‐old children diagnosed with autism participated in the study. All four children completed the training successfully and made significant progress in engaging in joint attention and in initiating joint attention skills. Following the completion of training and at 1 month follow‐up, parents reported that their children used their skills in different settings. Moreover, at follow‐up, all four children were reported to engage in joint attention behaviors and to enjoy doing so. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Auditory joint attention skills: Development and diagnostic differences during infancy

To date, joint attention skill assessments have focused on children’s responses to multimodal bids (RJA) and their initiation of bids (IJA) to multimodal spectacles. Here we gain a systematic view of auditory joint attention skills using a novel assessment that measures both auditory and multimodal RJA and IJA. In Study 1, 47 typically developing (TD) children were tested 5 times from 12 to 30 months to document auditory joint attention skill development. In Study 2, 113 toddlers (39 TD, 33 autism spectrum disorder [ASD], and 41 non-ASD developmental disorders [DD]; average age 22.4 months) were tested to discern the effects of ASD. Our findings fit well within the established depiction of joint attention skills with one important caveat: auditory items were far more difficult to execute than multimodal ones. By 24 months, TD children passed multimodal RJA items at the near-ceiling level, an accomplishment not reached even by 30 months for auditory RJA items. Intentional communicative IJA bids also emerged more slowly to auditory spectacles than to multimodal spectacles. Toddlers with DD outperformed toddlers with ASD on multimodal RJA items but toddlers in both groups rarely passed any auditory RJA items. Toddlers with ASD often monitored their partner’s attention during IJA items, albeit less often than toddlers with DD and TD toddlers, but they essentially never produced higher-level IJA bids, regardless of modality. Future studies should investigate further how variations in bids and targets affect auditory joint attention skills and probe the relation between these skills and language development.     

Reciprocal Imitation Following Adult Imitation by Children with Autism

This study examined the effects of adult imitation and adult playfulness on the imitation, social attention and initiation of new behaviours by non‐verbal preschoolers with autism. Videotapes taken from a previous study were recoded for the adult's imitation and playful behaviour and the children's imitation, social attention (looking at the adult's actions) and initiation of new behaviours. In the original study, twenty non‐verbal, 4‐ to 6‐year‐old children with autism were randomly assigned to an imitation or a contingent responsivity group. Both groups of children engaged in an intervention phase (during which the adult imitated the children or contingently responded to them) and a subsequent spontaneous play phase (during which the adult interacted spontaneously with the children). ANOVA for the current study revealed that the imitation group children versus the contingent responsivity group children spent a greater percent time showing social attention and initiating new behaviours during the intervention phase and showing social attention and imitating the adult's behaviours during the subsequent spontaneous play phase. A correlation analysis yielded significant correlations between the percent time the adult imitated the child during the intervention phase and the percent time the child showed social attention during the same intervention phase and imitating the adult during the subsequent spontaneous play phase. Adult imitation and playfulness during the spontaneous play phase were also correlated with the children's social attention during that phase. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Early social attention impairments in autism: social orienting, joint attention, and attention to distress

This study investigated social attention impairments in autism (social orienting, joint attention, and attention to another's distress) and their relations to language ability. Three- to four-year-old children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD; n = 72), 3- to 4-year-old developmentally delayed children (n = 34), and 12- to 46-month-old typically developing children (n = 39), matched on mental age, were compared on measures of social orienting, joint attention, and attention to another's distress. Children with autism performed significantly worse than the comparison groups in all of these domains. Combined impairments in joint attention and social orienting were found to best distinguish young children with ASD from those without ASD. Structural equation modeling indicated that joint attention was the best predictor of concurrent language ability. Social orienting and attention to distress were indirectly related to language through their relations with joint attention. These results help to clarify the nature of social attention impairments in autism, offer clues to developmental mechanisms, and suggest targets for early intervention.     

Language development at 18 months is related to multimodal communicative strategies at 12 months

The present study investigated the degree to which an infants’ use of simultaneous gesture–speech combinations during controlled social interactions predicts later language development. Nineteen infants participated in a declarative pointing task involving three different social conditions: two experimental conditions (a) available, when the adult was visually attending to the infant but did not attend to the object of reference jointly with the child, and (b) unavailable, when the adult was not visually attending to neither the infant nor the object; and (c) a baseline condition, when the adult jointly engaged with the infant's object of reference. At 12 months of age measures related to infants’ speech-only productions, pointing-only gestures, and simultaneous pointing–speech combinations were obtained in each of the three social conditions. Each child's lexical and grammatical output was assessed at 18 months of age through parental report. Results revealed a significant interaction between social condition and type of communicative production. Specifically, only simultaneous pointing–speech combinations increased in frequency during the available condition compared to baseline, while no differences were found for speech-only and pointing-only productions. Moreover, simultaneous pointing–speech combinations in the available condition at 12 months positively correlated with lexical and grammatical development at 18 months of age. The ability to selectively use this multimodal communicative strategy to engage the adult in joint attention by drawing his attention toward an unseen event or object reveals 12-month-olds’ clear understanding of referential cues that are relevant for language development. This strategy to successfully initiate and maintain joint attention is related to language development as it increases learning opportunities from social interactions.     

自闭症幼儿自主性共同注意的实验研究

为探索和发现自闭症幼儿的自主性共同注意的特征,以6名自闭症幼儿,以及在心理年龄与之匹配的弱智和正常儿童各6名作为研究对象,以实验和准实验的方法,进行此研究。同时还以秒为单位对实验过程与结果进行编码分析。结果表明,自闭症幼儿的自主性视觉方向所及目标物多于人,而人的目标中叉更多地锁定同伴而非教师。自闭症幼儿在唤起他人共同注意时多以“拉”和“抱”来替代指点行为。自主性共同注意的发生率与情绪有密切关系。     

12-month-old infants allocate increased neural resources to stimuli associated with negative adult emotion

Young infants use caregivers' emotional expressions to guide their behavior in novel, ambiguous situations. This skill, known as social referencing, likely involves at least 3 separate abilities: (a) looking at an adult in an unfamiliar situation, (b) associating that adult's emotion with the novel situation, and (c) regulating their own emotions in response to the adult's emotional display. The authors measured each of these elements individually as well as how they related to each other. The results revealed that 12-month-olds allocated more attention, as indicated by event-related potential measures, to stimuli associated with negative adult emotion than to those associated with positive or neutral emotion. Infants' interaction with their caregiver was affected by adult emotional displays. In addition, how quickly infants referenced an adult predicted both their brain activity in response to pictures of stimuli associated with negative emotion as well as some aspects of their behavior regulation. The results are discussed with respect to their significance for understanding why infants reference and regulate their behavior in response to adult emotion. Suggestions for further research are provided.     

The effect of brief delays to reinforcement on the acquisition of tacts in children with autism

We used discrete‐trial training to teach 3 children with autism to tact shapes of countries using 3 levels of reinforcement delay for correct responding: 0 s (immediate delivery), 6 s, and 12 s. Two of the 3 participants acquired the targets more quickly in the immediate‐delivery condition, suggesting that delays as brief as 6 s may be detrimental to learning tacts for some children.     

What are you looking at? Infants’ neural processing of an adult's object‐directed eye gaze

Previous research suggests that by 4 months of age infants use the eye gaze of adults to guide their attention and facilitate processing of environmental information. Here we address the question of how infants process the relation between another person and an external object. We applied an ERP paradigm to investigate the neural processes underlying the perception of the direction of an adult's eye gaze in 4-month-old infants. Infants showed differential processing of an adult's eye gaze, which was directed at a simultaneously presented object compared to non-object-directed eye gaze. This distinction was evident in two ERP components: The Negative component, reflecting attentional processes, and the positive slow wave, which is involved in memory encoding. The implications of these findings for the development of joint attention and related social cognitive functions are discussed.     

Modeling longitudinal change in the language abilities of children with autism: parent behaviors and child characteristics as predictors of change

The objective of the current study was to evaluate the patterns of longitudinal change in the language abilities of 28 children with autism during early and middle childhood. Results from fitting a series of multilevel models showed that children's rate of language growth was independently predicted by (a) children's responsiveness to others' bids for joint attention and (b) parents' responsiveness to their children's attention and activity during play. Both predictive relations could not be explained by initial variation in global developmental characteristics, such as IQ, mental age, or language abilities. These findings support a social?pragmatic view on language acquisition, which emphasizes the collaborative process through which children and their parents negotiate shared meaning.     

Success at Catching and Keeping Toddler's Attention: An Examination of Joint Attention Among Low-Income Mothers and Their 2-Year-Olds

Recent research suggests that competent caregiving by low-income parents may serve to buffer young children from some of the deleterious consequences of economic hardship. As one means of exploring competent caregiving in the context of poverty, this study examined the structuring of joint attention among 47 low-income mothers and their 24-month-old toddlers. Findings revealed that, on the whole, dyads spent approximately half of a 10-minute play period in bouts of collaborative joint attention. While mothers made social overtures, or bids, more frequently than children, children played a significant role in initiating bouts of joint attention. Highly engaged dyads generated significantly higher numbers of reciprocal maternal bids and fewer reciprocal child bids overall than did disengaged dyads. Sequential analyses suggested that reciprocal bids initiated by children were likely to lead to periods of collaborative joint attention among engaged dyads, but not among disengaged dyads. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mother–Infant Joint Attention and Sharing: Relations to Disorganized Attachment and Maternal Disrupted Communication

The normative development of infant shared attention has been studied extensively, but few studies have examined the impact of disorganized attachment and disturbed maternal caregiving on mother–infant shared attention. The authors examined both maternal initiations of joint attention and infants’ responses to those initiations during the reunion episodes of the Strange Situation Procedure at 12 and 18 months of infant age. The mothers' initiations of joint attention and three forms of infant response, including shunning, simple joint attention, and sharing attention, were examined in relation to infant disorganized attachment and maternal disrupted communication. Mothers who were disrupted in communication with their infants at 18 months initiated fewer bids for joint attention at 12 months, and, at 18 months, mothers of infants classified disorganized initiated fewer bids. However, the infant' responses were unrelated to either the infant' or the mother' disturbed attachment. At both ages, disorganized infants and infants of disrupted mothers were as likely to respond to maternal bids as were their lower risk counterparts. Our results suggest that a disposition to share experiences with others is robust in infancy, even among infants with adverse attachment experiences, but this infant disposition may depend on adult initiation of bids to be realized.