Multiple effects of joint attention intervention for children with autism.
Blend DTT and PRT to teach joint attention fast—plus you get free gains in words and social chat.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Five preschoolers with autism got daily lessons in joint attention.
Each child sat at a small table with one adult.
The adult used short trials: show toy, wait for eye contact, give toy.
Some trials were pure DTT. Others used PRT style—child picked the toy.
Sessions ran for four weeks. Parents watched and filled out checklists.
What they found
Every child learned to look, point, and show toys to share interest.
Parents saw the same new skills at home.
Bonus: every child also gained new words and started short back-and-forth chats.
Skills stayed strong one month later.
How this fits with other research
Grace (1995) first showed PRT could teach autistic kids pretend play. Eisenhower et al. (2006) now adds joint attention to the PRT win list.
Rutherford et al. (2007) looked at kids without teaching and found poor play when joint attention was low. That sounds gloomy, but their study just watched growth; A et al. taught skills. The two papers fit like puzzle pieces—low JA predicts delays, so teach JA early.
Yanchik et al. (2024) moved the same DTT ideas down to toddlers. They mixed in Natural Environment Teaching and saw bigger adaptive gains. A et al. shows DTT+PRT works for preschoolers; Amelia says toddlers may need the NET boost too.
Why it matters
You now have a road map: start with short DTT trials for eye contact, then let the child lead with PRT. In about a month you can pick up joint attention, new words, and smoother social turns all at once. Parents see the change at home, so generalization is built in. Use this blend when intake shows limited showing or pointing.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Joint attention refers to an early developing set of behaviors that plays a critical role in both social and language development and is specifically impaired in children with autism. In a series of three studies, preschool teachers demonstrated the effectiveness of discrete trial instruction and pivotal response training strategies to teach joint attention to 5 children with autism (Study 1). Parents of 2 of the 5 children also taught joint attention at home and in the community (Study 2). Several additional dependent measures demonstrated collateral improvements in expressive language and social-communicative characteristics that were socially validated by parent raters (Study 3). Results are discussed with respect to the importance of addressing different forms of joint attention, the necessity to extend intervention to naturalistic contexts and joint attention partners, the pivotal nature of joint attention, and whether intervention adequately addresses both the form and social function of joint attention.
Behavior modification, 2006 · doi:10.1177/0145445506289392