Exploring the Nature of Joint Attention Impairments in Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Associated Social and Cognitive Skills

Abstract

Exploring the nature of joint attention impairments in young children with autism spectrum disorder: associated social and cognitive skills. AbstractIt is generally accepted that joint attention skills are impaired in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In this study, social preference, attention disengagement and intention understanding, assumed to be associated with the development of joint attention, are explored in relation to joint attention skills in children with ASD at the age of 36 months.Response to joint attention was related to intention understanding, whereas the number of joint attention initiations was associated with attention disengagement, and somewhat less stronger with social preference. The level on which children initiated joint attention was related to social preference. Possible interpretations of these findings are discussed.

Impairments to visual disengagement in autism spectrum disorder: A review of experimental studies from infancy to adulthood

“…Impairments in initiating joint attention and responding to bids for joint attention have been reported in children with ASD (Sigman, 1998;Baranek, 1999;Jones and Carr, 2004;Curcio, 1978;Loveland and Landry, 1986;Mundy et al, 1990) and their HR siblings (Cassel et al, 2007;Goldberg et al, 2005;Charman, 2003;Morales et al, 2000;Mundy et al, 2007) by the first year of life, a period in which joint attention abilities begin to appear (Sigman, 1998;Corkum and Moore, 1998). A recent report by Schietecatte et al (2012) showed a relationship between visual disengagement and joint attention in ASD, indicating that children who were quick to disengage from a locus of interest showed a higher proportion of bids for or initiations of joint attention. Results such as this highlight the importance of visual disengagement.…”

“…That is, ASD have been reported to disengage more quickly than TD or DD (Kikuchi et al, 2011;Chawarska et al, 2010), to disengage more slowly (Stauder et al, 2011;Kawakubo et al, 2007) or to disengage at the same rate as TD (Fischer et al, 2013). Abnormal visual disengagement in very young infants might interfere with social-communication, emotion regulation, and joint attention in HR infants Schietecatte et al, 2012;Bryson et al, 2014). For example, if an infant has trouble disengaging from a distressing stimulus to look towards a distracting event, the infant may become hyper-aroused and, overtime, develop atypical arousal regulation (Gardner et al, 1992).…”

“…ASD is one of the most prevalent forms of developmental disability internationally, with current estimates at 1 in 68 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2014). Impairments to attention have often been considered to be associated or comorbid with the disorder (Keehn et al, 2013), although recent research has suggested that attentional abnormalities play more of a primary role in ASD, underlying several core features, including the impairments in emotional regulation Gardner et al, 1992;Anderson and Colombo, 2009;Garon et al, 2009), and in joint attention (Schietecatte et al, 2012;Morales et al, 2000;Mundy et al, 2007), as well as the inflexibility in behaviour (Hutt et al, 1964;Landry and Bryson, 2004;Lovaas et al, 1979;Casey et al, 1993;Townsend et al, 1996Townsend et al, , 2001Senju et al, 2004). Not surprisingly, impairments to the alerting network, the orienting network, and the executive control networks have been reported in ASD (for an overview of atypical attention in ASD using the three network model, see Keehn et al, 2013).…”

Joint Attention and Occupations for Children and Families Living with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Scoping Review

“…In children, RJA is considered a more fundamental skill, incorporating monitoring and following the gaze of a social partner; conversely, IJA in children is more complex, as it involves pointing, showing, giving, requesting, and alternating eye contact to capture the attention of another individual and create a shared social experience (Chiang et al, 2016;Hobson & Hobson, 2007;Kasari et al, 2010). The development of JA is thought to be closely related to the ability to relate to the mental state of others in the form of feelings, intentions, and experiences (Schietecatte et al, 2012). Considering the aforementioned social deficits associated with children living with ASD and prior research conducted on JA, it becomes clear that JA skills are an important area to target in the context of intervention.…”

Social-communicative abilities and language in preschoolers with autism spectrum disorders: Associations differ depending on language age

“…Joint attention is said to be important in language learning, because children need social cues like the eye gaze of a social partner to map new words to objects (Baldwin, 2000). Research has found concurrent and longitudinal associations between joint attention and language in typical children (Mundy et al, 2007) and children with ASD (Charman, 2003;Schietecatte, Roeyers, & Warreyn, 2012). Pretend play and language are theoretically associated because they both rely on a symbolic representation ability (Lewis, 2003).…”