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Speech, language and communication
Published in Ajay Sharma, Helen Cockerill, Lucy Sanctuary, Mary Sheridan's From Birth to Five Years, 2021
Ajay Sharma, Helen Cockerill, Lucy Sanctuary
The development of joint attention is a crucial stage in learning to communicate. The young infant's attentional focus is the face of a responsive adult or older child, and at around 5 months, external objects and events become the main interest. At about 9 months, a shared interest (infant-object-other) emerges as the main focus in interactions with others (Bruner 1983). Index finger pointing, to share an interest, becomes well established just before the first birthday.
My two year old isn’t talking!
Published in Sarah Kuppen, Little Kids, Big Dilemmas, 2018
Infant directed speech is not the only way in which we can support early language development. A very simple behaviour known as joint attention is another example. Joint attention is when both you and your child look at something together, or look at each other. Although a small action and something you may often do without thinking, it can be really effective. Imagine you are both looking at a dog and you say, ‘Look at that lovely big brown dog over there’. In this case pointing may also be helpful. With these instructions, it is likely that your child will be able to pick out the dog from the scene. Over time, she will learn to associate what she sees with not only the word dog but also the adjectives lovely, big and brown. Noticing and making sure that you and your child have joint attention when talking together is something you can easily add to your everyday activities.
Integrative Attachment Informed Cognitive Behavioral Play Therapy (IAI-CBPT) for Children With Medical Trauma
Published in Lawrence C. Rubin, Handbook of Medical Play Therapy and Child Life, 2017
Learning to control concentration on or away from aversive stimuli is a skill often used by and with children with medical trauma. At the extreme, dissociation can be perceived as an adaptive coping response to situations of extreme trauma. It allows for survival when life is threatened. To allow for this response at times when it can be helpful may be considered. When children are no longer experiencing an extremely painful procedure, it can be adaptive to help them learn to alter their response and move to an engaged and fully present awareness. Even when it is not adaptive, it is important that children’s experiences are validated as normal and ‘what our bodies do to survive’ at that time but do not need later. When altering focus, it is helpful to utilize grounding techniques. These can be done to allow the child to focus on sensory stimuli in the present moment. Within IAI-CBPT, children at Tiers II and III are more likely to have experienced dissociation or altered attention due to the trauma. The joint attention of parent–child play-based interventions can assist in drawing the child into the present and into relationship. For children at Tier I, who are less likely to historically or currently dissociate, executive functioning may have been less impacted by the trauma.
Development and testing of the eye-pointing classification scale for children with cerebral palsy
Published in Disability and Rehabilitation, 2022
Michael T. Clarke, Jenefer Sargent, Rosemary Cooper, Gabriella Aberbach, Laura McLaughlin, Gurveen Panesar, Amie Woghiren, Tom Griffiths, Katie Price, Caroline Rose, John Swettenham
The aim of this study was to develop and test a new eye-pointing classification scale suitable for use with non-speaking children with bilateral cerebral palsy (GMFCS IV and V). The scale was established through a 2-stage process that examined the validity and reliability of the new tool. The scale provides a simple description of the potential progression of key looking behaviours that underpin eye-pointing including the ability to establish fixation, disengage and transfer fixation to new items, and to shift fixation between an object of interest and a partner. It also captures the critical elements of eye-pointing itself, which include that it is a controlled and intentional action aimed at drawing others’ attention to things in the environment by the child looking alternately at the partner and the item of interest. Thus eye-pointing described in the scale reflects a bid to initiate joint attention. The scale does not document children’s motivations for eye-pointing. Children may eye-point to things and people for a host of different reasons and it is the task of the child and their partner together, in that moment, to establish the intended function of an eye-point. The scale has been made available free to download at www.ucl.ac.uk/gaze.
Children with autism can acquire a generalized repertoire of initiating bids for joint attention across a variety of stimuli and settings1
Published in Evidence-Based Communication Assessment and Intervention, 2020
Candace Joy Lane, Kortney Ann Rist
Joint attention is a complex skill that involves the coordination of attention between a social partner and an object or event of interest, as well as the ability to recognize that attentional focus is shared. Joint attention can occur using eye gaze, gestures, and vocalizations and typically emerges around 8 months of age and develops through age two (Bakeman & Adamson, 1984). Joint attention is a necessary skill that supports cognitive, language, and social development (Mundy et al., 2010). In fact, a strong joint attention repertoire at age three has been associated with closer friendships and lower conflict (Freeman et al., 2015). However, children with autism are identified as having deficits in the area of joint attention more often than typically developing children or children with other developmental and intellectual disabilities (Hahn et al., 2018; Mundy et al., 1986). As such, researchers have examined interventions to improve initiating and responding to joint attention bids for this population (Meindl & Cannella-Malone, 2011).
Pointing to success: Caregivers’ beliefs about intelligence matter in their interactions with children1
Published in Evidence-Based Communication Assessment and Intervention, 2019
Daniela M. Avelar, Caroline E. Morano, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff
One mechanism that may explain why pointing gestures may be helpful for learning is the use of joint attention. Joint attention occurs when two people attend to the same object or event at the same time. When a child points, it is typical for a caregiver to look at where the child is pointing and to label the object for the child. This provides an optimal learning moment for the child as the parent is following in on the child’s interest in an object and offering its name (Lucca & Wilbourn, 2016; Rowe & Goldin-Meadow, 2009). Previous research has also found relationships between the number of gestures parents make and children’s later vocabulary outcomes (Rowe & Goldin-Meadow, 2009; Rowe, Ozcaliskan, & Goldin-Meadow, 2008) as well as syntactic development (Iverson & Goldin-Meadow, 2005). For these reasons, when designing interventions, it is important to target all aspects of communication, not just speech.