The effect of social context on the functional communication skills of autistic children.
Extra adult hints do not make autistic kids point or show more, so teach them to start these acts instead of waiting for them to copy yours.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers watched autistic kids, kids with delays, and typical kids in a playroom. Adults sometimes gave hints to get the child’s attention. The team counted how often each child pointed, showed, or called an adult’s eye to a toy.
They wanted to know if extra adult prompts would help autistic children use these attention-directing acts as flexibly as the other groups.
What they found
Autistic children produced fewer pointing, showing, or calling behaviors overall. Even when adults pushed hard with hints, the autistic group did not increase these acts.
Their behaviors were also less flexible; they rarely shifted the way they gained attention to fit the moment.
How this fits with other research
Hou et al. (2024) later tracked eye movements and found the same cold start: autistic preschool and elementary kids looked less at social spots and their gaze jumped around more. The 1989 communication data and the 2024 gaze data line up—both show social context barely nudges attention.
Freeth et al. (2019) moved the test to adults. Autistic adults also looked less at an experimenter’s face during direct eye contact, but the gap shrank when the experimenter gazed away. Together these studies build a chain: from child pointing, to child eye gaze, to adult face looking—each paper extends the finding that direct social pressure does little to boost reciprocal attention in autism.
Petry et al. (2007) added a practical footnote. They showed that joint-attention skill, not autism severity, predicted language and social relating in young autistic children. So the stubborn lack of initiation seen in Landry et al. (1989) is worth treating early; it really does track with later language success.
Why it matters
If prompts alone do not lift spontaneous pointing or showing, do not burn session time repeating them. Instead, program the response from the child’s side. Use environmental sabotage—place desired items in sight but out of reach, turn off the screen, pause a favorite song—and wait. When the child even glances between you and the item, deliver the item at once. Build the initiation first; fine-tune flexibility later.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Set up one sabotage trial—put a wind-up toy on a high shelf, wait for any child-initiated eye-shift or point, and immediately give the toy.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
This study investigated autistic children's use of attention-directing gestures and language in three different interactive situations which varied in social context factors. These behaviors were videotaped and compared in autistic children (n = 15), children with developmental language delay (n = 14), matched on mental age and mean length of utterance (MLU), and MLU-matched young normal children (n = 13). Results supported the hypothesis that autistic children's attention-directing behavior would differ most from that of the other groups in spontaneous interactions. However, contrary to expectation, the autistic children did not produce more attention-directing behavior when a high degree of adult direction was provided. Overall, the autistic group used attention-directing behaviors less frequently than the other groups, and in the autistic group these behaviors varied less across social context factors. Results are interpreted in terms of their implications for language intervention programs with autistic children.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 1989 · doi:10.1007/BF02211847