A play and joint attention intervention for teachers of young children with autism: a randomized controlled pilot study.
Eight short teacher-coaching sessions that embed joint-attention and play prompts into daily preschool routines significantly boost these skills in young children with autism.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers trained preschool teachers to weave play and joint-attention prompts into everyday classroom routines.
Kids with autism aged 3–5 stayed in their normal classrooms.
Teachers got eight one-hour coaching sessions and then ran the strategies themselves.
What they found
Children in the coached classrooms showed more joint attention and pretend play than kids on the wait list.
The gains were medium-sized and showed up during regular class activities.
How this fits with other research
Panganiban et al. (2022) later used the same teacher-led JASPER style during small-group math and story time. They still saw peer gains, proving the method travels beyond play centers.
Hansen et al. (2018) swapped teachers for parents. Short home play sessions also lifted joint attention, showing the strategy works no matter who runs it.
Chiang et al. (2016) looks like a clash: caregiver training for 2- to 4-year-olds produced only tiny gains. The difference is age and dose — toddlers needed more sessions to catch up.
Why it matters
You can raise core autism skills without pulling kids out of class. Ask your district for eight hours of coach time, then embed prompts during centers, snack, and cleanup. Start next week: place a favorite toy in sight but out of reach, wait for eye contact, and hand it over.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The aim of this study was to pilot test a classroom-based intervention focused on facilitating play and joint attention for young children with autism in self-contained special education classrooms. Thirty-three children with autism between the ages of 3 and 6 years participated in the study with their classroom teachers (n = 14). The 14 preschool special education teachers were randomly assigned to one of three groups: (1) symbolic play then joint attention intervention, (2) joint attention then symbolic intervention, and (3) wait-list control period then further randomized to either group 1 or group 2. In the intervention, teachers participated in eight weekly individualized 1-h sessions with a researcher that emphasized embedding strategies targeting symbolic play and joint attention into their everyday classroom routines and activities. The main child outcome variables of interest were collected through direct classroom observations. Findings indicate that teachers can implement an intervention to significantly improve joint engagement of young children with autism in their classrooms. Furthermore, multilevel analyses showed significant increases in joint attention and symbolic play skills. Thus, these pilot data emphasize the need for further research and implementation of classroom-based interventions targeting play and joint attention skills for young children with autism.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2013 · doi:10.1177/1362361312474723