A further investigation of goal-directed intention understanding in young children with autism spectrum disorders.
Secure face attention first—without it, preschoolers with ASD miss the social part of your cue.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team watched preschoolers with and without autism while the kids tried to read an adult’s goals.
Some trials showed an object cue: the adult reached for a toy. Other trials added a social cue: the adult first looked at the child and then reached.
The researchers checked whether the child was looking at the adult’s face when the cue happened.
What they found
When the goal was shown only with the object, both groups picked the right toy equally well.
When the goal was shown with a look-plus-reach, the autism group failed unless the experimenter made sure they were watching the face first.
In short, autistic kids can understand goals, but they miss the social part if their eyes aren’t on the face.
How this fits with other research
Schietecatte et al. (2012) saw the same link in toddlers: better intention understanding went hand-in-hand with better joint-attention responses.
Warreyn et al. (2007) and Anthony et al. (2020) add why this happens—autistic preschoolers look at the pointing finger or nearby objects instead of the face, so the social cue never lands.
Pitchford et al. (2019) give a fix: a 15-minute computer game that rewards face looks immediately boosts face gaze in 5- to 12-year-olds with ASD.
Why it matters
Before you test or teach social skills, take two seconds to secure face-to-face contact. Call the child’s name, wait for eye shift, then give the cue. This tiny pause can be the difference between a missed lesson and a learned intention.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Before each social cue, prompt eye contact with a name call or gentle tap, then deliver the instruction.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Findings from research investigating goal-directed intention understanding in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have been equivocal, in part because of the varying methodologies used across studies. This study compares both object-oriented and social-communicatively cued goal-directed intention understanding in children with ASD and typically-developing children. Relative to matched controls, children with ASD did not exhibit deficits in object-oriented intention understanding. While children with ASD also demonstrated the ability to understand intention when cued by social-communication indicators, typically-developing children differentiated between intentional and unintentional acts at a significantly greater level. Group differences in performance were eliminated if only trials in which children attended to the experimenter's face were considered. Results suggest that children with ASD have intact object-oriented intention understanding abilities, and are able to use social-communicative cues to understand intention. However, their ability to demonstrate social-communicatively cued intention understanding is limited by a lack of attention to relevant social-communicative information.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2014 · doi:10.1007/s10803-014-2181-z