Get involved in the activity by making enthusiastic comments and copying your child’s actions. When your child shows interest in an object, mimic their interest. This involved allowing the child to choose the activity, responding to the child’s messages, not taking over the interaction, and keeping play positive and fun. Follow your child’s lead – a 2014 study published in journal Autism found that when parents were responsive during interactions, their children with ASD tended to initiate joint engagement with them.Practice joint attention as part of your daily routine, during tasks such as brushing teeth or at bath and mealtimes.Bubble blowing is a great activity for working on joint attention and communication skill development.Use items that your child most enjoys playing with to engage their interest.Use an animated tone of voice, gestures and facial expressions to help establish joint attention.Encourage your child to shift their attention from what they are playing with to what you have.Complete something together, such as a puzzle or craft activity like weaving.Start with short sessions and gradually increase the time. Play and practise turn-taking – this helps to develop joint attention in a natural, relaxed setting.Making eye contact can be especially difficult for children with autism, so discuss with your therapist whether this is an appropriate goal. It’s considered socially appropriate to look at someone who is talking to you and faces provide a lot of social cues. Focus on faces and developing eye contact – encourage your child to look at you.There are many ways parents and caregivers can help their kids develop joint attention skills, such as: Being able to draw another person’s attention to objects or events for the purpose of sharing experiences.Following the gaze and point of another person.Sharing emotional states with another person.Shifting of gaze between people and objects.Orienting and attending to a social partner (that is, the person you are interacting with).The skills needed for joint attention include: Also, it may make it difficult for a person with autism to get their wants and needs met. This could result in missed opportunities to interact and communicate with others. Joint attention and autismĬhildren with autism may have difficulties with joint attention, as they may find it difficult to interact while paying attention to an object and a person. Joint attention helps develop important social skills such as bonding and seeing another’s point of view. ![]() Without joint attention skills, it could be difficult for children to interact and develop relationships with their caregivers and peers. In typically developing children, joint attention skills start to develop soon after birth and by the age of three, children are usually competent at gaining and maintaining joint attention from adults and peers. Why is joint attention important?īeing able to establish joint attention is vital for developing social-communication and cognitive skills. Responding to, is easier than initiating, joint attention. The child responds by following the parent’s gaze and gesture (eg pointing using the index finger) to look at the ball. For example, a parent points to a ball and says, “look at the ball!”. In this scenario, the child responds to someone else’s efforts to gain joint attention. Initiating joint attention could indicate that a child is socially motivated. Older children may use vocalisations to gain attention (eg “look here mum”). For example, the child may point to a toy, and gaze at their parent to get them to look at it, too. In this case, the child initiates the social interaction. There are two ways joint attention can occur : 1. Further developed skills may include focusing on a game or requesting items, such as a favourite toy or food. Joint attention (also known as ‘shared attention’) may be gained by using eye contact, gestures (eg pointing using the index finger) and/or vocalisations, including spoken words (eg “look over there”).Įarly joint attention skills may include a child reaching out to be picked up by an adult or looking at the same page of a book with another person. For example, a parent and child may both look at a toy they’re playing with or observe a train passing by. It requires the ability to gain, maintain, and shift attention. ![]() Joint attention involves sharing a common focus on something (such as other people, objects, a concept, or an event) with someone else. It is a form of early social and communicative behaviour. Joint attention is a behaviour in which two people focus on an object or event, for the purpose of interacting with each other.
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