Teaching joint attention related behaviors in the context of social vs non social consequences: assessing affective expression.

• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2047/d10019492

The purpose of this study was to evaluate levels of affect in the context of joint attention using social and non social consequences. Participants were nine preschool children diagnosed with autism and typically developing children. Experiment 1 evaluated the level of affect in the context of joint attention during 3-minute play sessions across 4 different activities. Experiment 2 evaluated if teaching joint attention with social consequences increased the level of positive affect compared to teaching joint attention with non social consequences. Results showed that children diagnosed with autism showed lower levels of positive affect in the context of joint attention compared to typically developing children and teaching joint attention with social consequences increased the level of positive affect for all participants. The importance of social consequences in teaching children with autism are discussed.