The Effect of Prompts within Embedded Circumscribed Interests to Teach Initiating Joint Attention in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Abstract

Joint attention occurs when two people engage in eye contact, verbalizations, or gestures between each other and a common object for the purpose of social interaction. Interventions which embedded participant's circumscribed interests (i.e., specific topics or themes of abnormal intensity) in materials found increases in joint attention without direct intervention. Previous joint attention intervention successfully taught three children with autism to respond to others' joint attention directives using interventions with circumscribed interest-related materials. However, initiating joint attention and generalization across materials and settings were not addressed. The current study investigated the effectiveness of prompt fading and reinforcement while engaging in circumscribed interest-related activities on initiating joint attention for three children with autism. All children acquired joint attention initiations; however, only two did so while engaging with circumscribed interest-related materials. Participants demonstrated variable generalization across activities, partners, and settings. Parents reported declines in circumscribed interest-related social interference from pre-to postintervention. Results suggest teaching joint attention initiations using circumscribed interest-related materials to teach joint attention initiations may be an effective strategy for some children with autism. Future research implications are discussed.Joint attention (JA) occurs when two people make eye contact, verbalize, or gesture in reference to a common object/topic for the purpose of interacting with each other and the object (Bakeman and Adamson 1984). Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) show deficits in JA within the first two years of life (Mundy and Acra 2006; Mundy and J Dev Phys Disabil

Individualizing Intervention to Teach Joint Attention, Requesting, and Social Referencing to Children with Autism

“…Edward stopped responding to the original partial prompt during IJA. Similar to Kryzak and Jones (2015), in which a preassessment was used to determine what prompt would evoke eye contact in children with ASD, the interventionist screened children to determine if they visually tracked moving objects. Because Edward consistently tracked moving objects, the interventionist modified the partial prompt to consist of holding a toy visible in the palm of the her hand as she moved her hand from the IJA toy to her eyes to trace the child's visual path.…”

“…In another study, interventionists conducted a preassessment to help guide the choice of prompting procedures. The preassessment in Kryzak and Jones (2015) involved the interventionist saying the child's name or the word "look" or tracing the child's gaze with a stimulus in order to determine which antecedent evoked the child's eye contact. For one of three children, the prompts that were selected based on the preassessment were not effective in evoking eye contact to engage in IJA while the child was engaging in circumscribed interest items.…”

“…As in Taylor and Hoch (2008) and Kryzak and Jones (2015), interventionists sometimes also change prompting procedures during intervention for requesting with children with ASD. In a study of teaching multistep requests with a speech-generating device, Waddington et al (2014) modified their planned procedures in two ways.…”

Response to name in children with autism: Treatment, generalization, and maintenance

“…Many studies have targeted the behavioral topography of eye contact in individuals with ASD and other developmental disorders, outside of the functional context of RTN. For example, interventions have been designed to increase eye contact following instructions like "look at me" (Foxx, 1977;Hall, Maynes, & Reiss, 2009), as a component of joint attention (e.g., Dube, 2004;Kryzak & Jones, 2015;Taylor & Hoch, 2008;Whalen & Schreibman, 2003), as a way to assess interest during conversations (Peters & Thompson, 2015;Stewart, Carr, & LeBlanc, 2007), and concurrent to making requests (Carbone, O'Brien, Sweeney-Kerwin, & Albert, 2013;Jeffries, Crosland, & Miltenberger, 2016;Ninci et al, 2013). However, to date only two studies have evaluated treatments for increasing eye contact in the functional context of RTN for children with ASD.…”

A pilot study: a computer game-based assessment of visual perspective taking of four children with autism with high support needs

“…Baker 2000;Boyd et al 2007;Charlop, Kurtz, and Casey 1990;Jacobsen 2000;Kryzak and Jones 2014;Mancil and Pearl 2008;McGonigle-Chalmers et al 2013;Naoi et al 2008;Vismara and Lyons 2007). In addition, computer games and tasks could be used as a starting point for learning and assessing children's capabilities as they have been found to be a viable source for education and entertainment (Grynszpan et al 2013;Ilg et al 2012;Munson and Pasqual 2012;Wass and Porayska-Pomsta 2013).…”