Targeting joint attention 101
With children with ASD, especially early intervention and pre-school ages, targeting joint attention is critical. What is joint attention? The ability to sustain attention for a duration of time with another person. Joint attention is the foundation for communication, cognitive growth, and executive functioning. Communication requires joint attention because it’s how we share information, more commonly known as a conversation (ha!). Most of why we communicate as humans is to relate and create social interactions with others.
Targeting joint attention in therapy can be rather challenging (i.e. kids with ASD want to play alone). Think about how you are targeting joint attention now in your sessions? An important thing to remember is keeping our interactions for joint attention natural. Children are not going to learn if they are not regulated. Pressuring a child to look at our face or with-holding toys creates a negative pressure. Negative pressure does not regulate a child’s brain to learn. Instead, focus on following the child’s lead and immersing yourself or the parent into the child’s activity. Target activities that you know the child won’t stem on.
Here are a few ways to target joint attention:
Use a mirror. Have the child look into the mirror with you. Sing a song, make faces, or take turns counting. All of these things will help the child attend to your face.
Put your face into the child’s line of sight. Lie down next to their toys, or hold things up to your face. Use big expressions when they make contact with your face, and keep it fun!
Create more pauses between utterances or turn taking. Playing peek-a-boo or singing, ensure you are leaving a long awkward pause (yes, they can be awkward). But sometimes kids with ASD need a lot of time to synchronize a pause means it’s their turn. Ensure your facial expression is “waiting” and your tone of voice suddenly stops.
Imitate a child’s gestures.
Share interest in the same toy and take turns going back and forth.
Surprise the child with a new activity or toy.
Work yourself into a child’s isolated play.
Help parents to understand what you are doing so that they can carry these tactics over too. The more opportunities the better. More parent training = more opportunities on a daily basis. Although it sometimes may feel like our therapy is not helping, I assure you that every bit counts. Keep it up!
