Affective sharing in the context of joint attention interactions of normal, autistic, and mentally retarded children.

Researchers watched the preschoolers play with a parent and toys. Ten kids had autism, ten had intellectual disability, ten were typical. The team coded every smile, laugh, or warm look while the pairs tried joint attention tasks.

They counted how often the child shared positive feelings while looking at the same toy as the adult.

Autistic children showed far less happy affect during shared looking. Their rate was about half that of the other two groups.

Kids with intellectual disability shared joy at the same level as typical kids. The gap was specific to autism, not general developmental delay.

Lemons et al. (2015) seems to disagree. They found no stress response to eye contact in autistic preschoolers, so gaze itself is not aversive. The 1990 paper measured warm feelings, not pupil size. Affect can be low even if eyes feel safe.

Kourassanis-Velasquez et al. (2019) and Pérez-Fuster et al. (2022) show the path forward. Both taught joint attention and saw gains. Because the 1990 study proved the joy piece is missing, new programs add smile prompts and praise for shared excitement, not just looking.

Liu et al. (2021) extends the story to older kids. They timed gaze shifts and still found tiny delays in autism. Together the papers show the social-affective gap starts early and lingers, but practice helps.

When you run social-skills groups, target affect, not just eye contact. Model a big smile, wait, then praise any happy face plus shared look. Script phrases like “I love this truck!” so the child links words to joy. Track smiles per minute as your primary data. If joy rises, joint attention usually follows.