Increases in the joint attention behavior of eye gaze alternation to share enjoyment as a collateral effect of pivotal response treatment for three children with autism

Preverbal communication, language acquisition, and joint attention have long been of interest to researchers and practitioners. Both attending to social partners and sharing attentional focus between objects or events and others precede the onset of a child's first lexicon and the amount of time spent in joint attention episodes may be related to later language skills. Thus, the importance of joint attention in typically developing children, and the lack thereof in children with autism, has interested researchers in terms of diagnosis and intervention. This study examined the development of joint attention behaviors; specifically gaze alternation to share enjoyment, as a collateral effect of Pivotal Response Teaching (PRT) techniques. Participants consisted of three children with autism who had less than 10 functional words. A multiple baseline design across three participants was employed to address the following questions: (1) whether the child increased his or her eye gaze alternation to share enjoyment as a collateral effect of PRT, (2) whether parents of very young children with autism could be taught to use PRT, and (3) whether the child increased his verbal expressive language as a result of PRT. Data suggest that gaze alternation to share enjoyment increased as a collateral effect of Pivotal Response Treatment, and that this increase generalized to another familiar adult and the ESCS assessment post intervention. In addition, this study also replicated previous findings that parents could be taught to use PRT procedures in a relatively short period of time and that the children increased their expressive verbal language use as a result of this intervention. Results are discussed in terms of clinical implications and future research directions.