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Friday, May 8, 2009
Northwest Hall (Chicago Hilton)
2:30 PM
Background: Joint attention is a central deficit of autism (Mundy, Sigman, Ungerer, & Sherman, 1986; Loveland & Landry, 1986). Joint attention involves skills such as pointing to share, showing toys, and alternating gaze between people and objects. These skills are often accompanied by shared positive affect and vocalizations and generally within shared engagement with others (Kasari et al, 1990). Previous research suggests that the joint attention skills of children with autism may improve through early intervention (Kasari, Freeman, & Paparella, 2006), but accompanying shared positive affect and vocalizations are rarely described. Shared positive affect is important to joint attention because it may indicate the true nature of the communicative intent of the child (Bruner).
Objectives: To determine whether there was an increase in the quality of joint attention (shared positive affect, vocalizations) for children with autism who were randomized to a joint attention intervention, symbolic play intervention, or control group.
Methods: This study uses data from a previously conducted intervention (Kasari et al., 2006). The intervention randomized twenty preschoolers to a six-week joint attention intervention, sixteen preschoolers to a six-week symbolic play intervention, and sixteen preschoolers to a control group. The quality of joint attention was opperationalized by the presence of the following constructs during a joint attention instance: spoken utterances, shared positive affect, or both spoken utterances and shared positive affect. Spoken utterances were defined as any utterance the child produced that was a phoneme or larger and shared positive affect was defined as a smile directed toward an adult.
The quality of joint attention was assessed during a non-verbal communication skill assessment, the Early Social Communication Scale (Mundy, 1995). This assessment was video recorded four times during the study: at entry, exit from the intervention, six months after exit, and twelve months after exit. Cohen’s Kappa was.79 and was conducted on 20% of the assessments.
Results: This study compared the change in the quality of joint attention at all four time points. There were no significant between group differences on the constructs at entry, p>.05. There were main effects for group and time for spoken utterances during joint attention, positive affect during joint attention, as well as positive affect and spoken utterances during joint attention, p<.05. When follow-up contrasts were run, the joint attention and symbolic play group had significantly more instances of each joint attention type than the control group during the six and 12 month follow-ups, p<.05. Interestingly, the joint attention and symbolic play groups were not significantly different from one another at any time point, p<.05.
Conclusions:
Objectives: To determine whether there was an increase in the quality of joint attention (shared positive affect, vocalizations) for children with autism who were randomized to a joint attention intervention, symbolic play intervention, or control group.
Methods: This study uses data from a previously conducted intervention (Kasari et al., 2006). The intervention randomized twenty preschoolers to a six-week joint attention intervention, sixteen preschoolers to a six-week symbolic play intervention, and sixteen preschoolers to a control group. The quality of joint attention was opperationalized by the presence of the following constructs during a joint attention instance: spoken utterances, shared positive affect, or both spoken utterances and shared positive affect. Spoken utterances were defined as any utterance the child produced that was a phoneme or larger and shared positive affect was defined as a smile directed toward an adult.
The quality of joint attention was assessed during a non-verbal communication skill assessment, the Early Social Communication Scale (Mundy, 1995). This assessment was video recorded four times during the study: at entry, exit from the intervention, six months after exit, and twelve months after exit. Cohen’s Kappa was.79 and was conducted on 20% of the assessments.
Results: This study compared the change in the quality of joint attention at all four time points. There were no significant between group differences on the constructs at entry, p>.05. There were main effects for group and time for spoken utterances during joint attention, positive affect during joint attention, as well as positive affect and spoken utterances during joint attention, p<.05. When follow-up contrasts were run, the joint attention and symbolic play group had significantly more instances of each joint attention type than the control group during the six and 12 month follow-ups, p<.05. Interestingly, the joint attention and symbolic play groups were not significantly different from one another at any time point, p<.05.
Conclusions:
At six and twelve months after the intervention concluded, children in the joint attention and symbolic play group had a higher quality of joint attention. Future research can investigate when exactly the quality of joint attention begins to improve and what factors may best predict the rate at which the quality of joint attention improves.