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What is Joint Attention Autism?
Discussing what Joint Attention Autism is and how to discover techniques, benefits and solutions for extra care.
April 27, 2024
Noah Goldstein
What is Joint Attention Autism?
Joint Attention in Autism
Joint attention happens when two people pay attention to the same thing and let each other know that they are sharing that moment. They do this by looking at each other, gesturing (pointing to it), and/or saying something about the thing they are paying attention to.
Joint attention usually develops towards the end of a child’s first year and continues to improve into their second year. It’s a really important skill that helps children develop interaction and language skills. Through joint attention, children learn:
- How to share their interests with others.
- The enjoyment that comes from having back-and-forth interactions.
- The words that match whatever has caught their attention when adults describe what they are focused on at that moment.
Joint attention always involves objects/events – two people can be interacting and share a moment together, such as when a parent and child play a tickle game and laugh and smile at each other. However, if they are not also both focussing on an object or something that’s happening, it isn’t joint attention.
They need to be focussed on each other but also on something else at the same time, such as an airplane flying by, someone who has just arrived for a visit, something that just fell off a shelf, an interesting picture in a book, a surprising noise a toy just made, or a dog barking next door. Usually, one of them notices something and draws the other person’s attention to it. Which brings us to another key point about joint attention
There are two parts to joint attention: initiating joint attention and responding to joint attention – initiating joint attention involves drawing someone’s attention to something interesting, whereas responding to joint attention involves responding when someone else draws your attention to something. These are two separate skills, and some children (such as children on the autism spectrum) may have more difficulty initiating joint attention than responding to it
Joint attention is a building block for children to learn to communicate. When children focus on the same thing as their caregivers, and when they hear the words that match their joint focus, they are primed to learn new words. For children on the autism spectrum, research shows that the better their joint attention skills are early on, the better their communication skills are when they are older. By helping your child develop joint attention, you are not only showing your child that it’s fun to interact and share interests with others, but you are paving the way for other communication skills to develop.
Where Every Heart Finds Its Rhythm
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