Middle Eastern Journal of Disability Studies

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Khademi H S, Alizadeh H, Farokhi N, Kazemi F. Designing a Joint Attention-Training Program and Examining Its Effects on Linguistic Skills in Young Children with High Functioning Autism. MEJDS 2021; 11 :161-161
URL: http://jdisabilstud.org/article-1-1107-en.html

Background & Objectives: Autism is a kind of neurodevelopmental disorder that affects various growth characteristics of children. Joint attention deficit is among the first diagnostic symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Joint attention is essential in developing complex social skills and language. Individuals with ASD display deficits in this domain. Behavioral interventions targeting joint attention effectively teach these skills in young children with ASD. These children also encounter problems in different aspects of language and speech development. Joint attention is an early–developing social–communicative skill. Two individuals (usually a young child & an adult) use gestures and gaze to share attention concerning interesting objects or events. This skill critically impacts social and language development. Impaired development of joint attention is a cardinal feature of children with ASD; thus, it is crucial to develop this skill in early intervention efforts. Children with ASD are prone to impairments in joint attention skills compared to children with intellectual disabilities. The literature also indicates that the acquisition of combined attention skills in children with ASD concerns ancillary gains in other social abilities, including social initiations, positive affect, imitation, and expressive language. The present study aimed to investigate the effects of joint education on linguistic skills in children with high functioning ASD.
Methods: This was a quasi–experimental study with pretest–posttest and a control group design. The sample consisted of 30 children selected through the convenience sampling method. Children were aged between 4 years and 11 months to 6 years and one month. The study participants were randomly assigned into the experimental and control groups. The study population included all young children with high functioning ASD referring to wellbeing health centers in Tehran City, Iran, in 2017. The experimental group underwent thirteen 60–minute joint attention training sessions. The instrument used in this study was TOLD–P:3. The sentence imitation and grammatical understanding scores from the language development test–primary third edition (TOLD–P:3; Newcomer & Hammill, 1998): Test of language development primary, designed to access children's receptive and expressive spoken language competence relative to semantics, syntax, and phonology.
Results: The multivariate analysis of covariance data suggested a significant difference between the scores of the experimental and control groups on the adjusted averages of visual vocabulary, related vocabulary, oral vocabulary, grammatical understanding, sentence imitation, grammatical completeness, phonological analysis, and word production (p<0.001). This difference was observed in all of these variables; the scores of the experimental group were higher than the control group.
Conclusion: There is a swiftly growing literature on training joint attention in children with ASD through various approaches, which may differ on several dimensions. Treatment methodologies may comprise the elements of structured teaching, child–directed teaching, or a combination. Interventions may also target initiations, responding, or both; however, strong evidence suggests that a systematic breakdown of social interaction components into smaller skill units best facilitates increased targeted joint attention behaviors. A burgeoning literature supports this claim with convincing demonstrations that toddlers with ASDs display marked deficits in joint attention skills during standardized assessments and rarely engage in periods of shared engagement that entail coordinating attention to social partners and a shared topic during social interactions. The collected results indicated the effectiveness of the joint education program on the improvement of language skills of children with high function. Therefore, it is suggested that this educational program be used to improve these children's linguistic and communication skills.