Before social cognition there is joint processing of information about the attention of self and others. This joint attention requires the integrated activation of a distributed cortical network involving the anterior and posterior attention systems. In infancy, practice with the integrated activation of this distributed attention network is a major contributor to the development of social cognition. Thus, the functional neuroanatomies of social cognition and the anterior-posterior attention systems have much in common. These propositions have implications for understanding joint attention, social cognition, and autism.

This study was designed to examine the degree to which individual differences in gestural joint attention skills predicted language development among autistic children. A group of 15 autistic children (mean CA = 45 months) were matched with one group of mentally retarded (MR) children on mental age and another group of MR children on language age. These groups were administered the Early Social-Communication Scales. The latter provided measures of gestural requesting, joint attention, and social behaviors. The results indicated that, even when controlling for language level, mental age, or IQ, autistic children displayed deficits in gestural joint attention skills on two testing sessions that were 13 months apart. Furthermore, the measure of gestural nonverbal joint attention was a significant predictor of language development in the autistic sample. Other variables, including initial language level and IQ were not significant predictors of language development in this sample.

Young autistic children were compared to normal and control samples on measures of non-verbal communication skills and object play skills. Deficits in non-verbal indicating behaviors best discriminated the children diagnosed as autistic from the other groups. Although the autistic children also exhibited deficits in object play behavior, these deficits did not add appreciably to the discriminant function based on the non-verbal communication behaviors. These results suggest that a deficit in the development of non-verbal indicating behaviors is a significant characteristic of young children who receive the diagnosis of autism.

This study examined the development of joint attention in 95 infants assessed between 9 and 18 months of age. Infants displayed significant test -retest reliability on measures of following gaze and gestures (responding to joint attention, RJA) and in their use of eye contact to establish social attention coordination (initiating joint attention, IJA). Infants displayed a linear, increasing pattern of age-related growth on most joint attention measures. However, IJA was characterized by a significant cubic developmental pattern. Infants with different rates of cognitive development exhibited different frequencies of joint attention acts at each age, but did not exhibit different agerelated patterns of development. Finally, 12-month RJA and 18-month IJA predicted 24-month language after controlling for general aspects of cognitive development.The human capacity for social attention coordination has been referred to as joint attention (Bakeman & Adamson, 1984;Bruner & Sherwood, 1983). Different behavioral manifestations of joint attention begin to emerge in the first 6 months of life (D'Entremont, Hains, & Muir, 1997;Farroni, Massaccesi, & Francesca, 2002;Morales, Mundy, & Rojas, 1998) and continue to develop at least through 3 years of age (Adamson, Bakeman, & Dekner, 2004;Carpenter, Nagell, & Tomasello, 1998). These different infant joint attention behaviors may be used for declarative and instrumental-imperative functions (Bates, Benigni, Bretherton, Camaioni, & Volterra, 1979), as well as to initiate or respond to bids in interactions with social partners (Seibert, Hogan, & Mundy, 1982).Various labels have been used to refer to these behavioral dimensions of infant joint attention (Carpenter et al., 1998). Here we adopt the nomenclature initially suggested by Seibert et al. (1982) that is currently widely used in the research literature as well as in multidimensional assessments of early social communication development (e.g., Fidler, Philofsky, Hepburn, & Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Peter Mundy, University of Miami, 5665 Ponce De Leon Blvd., Coral Gables, FL 33146. Electronic mail may be sent to pmundy@miami.edu. NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptChild Dev. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 March 11. Published in final edited form as:Child Dev. 2007 ; 78(3): 938-954. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2007.01042.x. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript Rogers, 2005;Henderson, Yoder, Yale, & McDuffie, 2002;Laing et al., 2002; Lord et al., 2002;Mundy, Sigman, Kasari, & Yirmiya, 1988;Smith & Ulvund, 2003;Wetherby, Allen, Cleary, Kublin, & Goldstein, 2002). Accordingly, responding to joint attention (RJA) refers to the ability to follow the direction of gaze and gestures of others, initiating joint attention (IJA) refers to the ability to use direction of gaze and gestures to direct the attention of others to spontaneously share experiences, initiating behavior regulation/requests (IBR) refers to the ability to use gaze and gestures to...

Autism is a development disorder that is characterized by a significant disturbance of social development. Research strongly suggests that this disorder results from neurological anomalies or deficits. However, both the specific neural systems involved in autism, and the most pertinent behavioral functions of those systems remains unclear. One current topic of debate concerns the degree to which the social disturbance of autism may result from developmental anomalies in neurological systems that subserve cognitive, or affective processes. In this paper a model of the neurological, cognitive, and affective processes involved in the pathogenesis of autism will be described in the context of an attempt to understand dissociations in the early social-skill development of these children. Young children with autism are better able to use social-communication gestures to request objects or events than they are able to use similar gesture simply to initiate joint or socially shared attention relative to an object or event. An integration of recent research suggests that joint attention skill development differs from requesting skill development with regard to affective and cognitive processes that may be associated with frontal and midbrain neurological systems. In particular, this integration of the literature suggests the following: (a) there is a specific neurological subsystem that regulates and promotes what are called social-emotional approach behaviors; (b) the tendency to initiate joint attention bids is prototypical of a social-emotional approach behavior; and (c) attenuation of social-approach behaviors in children with autism leads to a specific impoverishment of social information processing opportunities. This impoverishment has a lifelong negative effect on the social cognitive development of these children.