The Impact of Behavior Therapist Training on Responding to Joint Attention in Autistic Children

Abstract

Joint attention (JA), defined as shared focus on an object or event with another person, is an important skill for social and language development. Autistic children may demonstrate differences in JA, and addressing JA may be included in naturalistic intervention. The study taught three behavior therapists (BTs) to implement the JA teaching procedure using behavioral skills training (BST). In addition, four autistic children learned to respond to a “show” bid for JA using socially based reinforcers and interactive stimuli using a multiple baseline across participants design. BTs demonstrated low accuracy of teaching JA bids during baseline. Following BST, the percentage correct increased to mastery levels and generalized to teaching the child participants to respond to JA bids. When JA training was introduced, performance levels of responding to JA moved from low levels to mastery levels for child participants and generalized to novel stimuli or people. BTs found both training procedures to be socially valid.