Teaching joint attention skills to pairs of children with autism

Abstract

AbstractThe purpose of the current study was to integrate recommendations from the joint attention literature into a set of procedures suited for a clinical setting serving children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. In baseline, the two pairs of children did not engage in any form of joint attention with one another during the target play context (i.e., a treasure hunt). A treatment package consisting of script fading, graduated guidance, and echoic prompting was used to teach one child per pair to engage in an initiation of joint attention (IJA) and the other child to engage in a response to joint attention (RJA). Results suggest the intervention was effective as children in all pairs independently engaged in IJA and RJA. During a role reversal probe (i.e., without direct teaching), all participants demonstrated responses taught to their peer. Finally, some increases in responding were observed during generalization activities.