Controversies in Autism - Joint Attention

Joint Attention

Joint attention is the shared focus of two individuals on an object. It refers to a cluster of behaviors in one of two classes: a child's response to someone else pointing or shifting eye gaze, and a child seeking another's attention. Many joint-attention behaviors differ in children with autism: for example, eye contact is relatively absent or atypical. These joint attention skills seem to be prerequisites for functional language development. It has also been hypothesized that autistic children initiate joint attention perhaps even as often as their neurotypical peers, albeit in atypical ways, and that a parent should join an autistic child's focus of attention and try harder to notice the child's atypical requests for attention rather than insist on typical behavior from the child. The empirical data supporting the latter hypothesis has been questioned.