General and specific indicators of social cognition: the role of joint attention skills for children with ASD

Background: The project was designed to target the particular social-cognitive qualities that are useful in education for children who have mild ASD Autism Spectrum Disorders.

Objectives: were to show (a) the specific rather than general social-cognitive developmental delays of ASD; and (b) that the specific joint attention skills are responsive to brief training.

Methods: Part 1 was a correlational study of general and specific social and cognitive indicators.  Part 2 was an experiment to show whether joint attention improves for children with ASD.    

Participants (N = 68) were children aged 5.0 to 12.6 years (mean 8.9, SD 2.0). The sample included children with mild ASD (N = 12) aged 6.3 to 12.6 years (mean age = 9.1, SD = 2.1).   

Results:   Specific indicators of children's theory of mind and executive functioning were sensitive and specific to ASD.  In contrast, general cognitive functioning was not necessarily low for children with ASD.  Self concepts of cognitive, physical and social activities were also similar (except a stronger sense of individuality for children with ASD).  As expected, the experiment improved joint attention, specifically proto-declarative not proto-imperative indicators. (The brief intervention did not target Theory of Mind and executive functioning.)      

Conclusions: Findings show some of the specific rather than general social-cognitive indicators that support learning for children with mild ASD.  These joint attention skills are amenable to change in brief focused one-to-one sessions.  The useful tools used in this project also suggest how we may discover in further long-term studies the roles of children’s sense of individuality and joint attention skills as precursors to theory of mind.