Per Holth - presented at ABA Chicago 2008 - Joint Attention

• joint attention - pointing, weatherman (I have no idea what I meant by this)
  • gaze following between mother and child
    • child monitors and follows
  • social referencing
    • check in and adjust emotional reaction
  • initiation - pointing
    • protoimperitive - coordination of attention
      • get attention and point again
      • similar to a mand
    • protodeclaritive - preverbal; purely social attention
      • social reinforcers - what are they?
      • how do they become reinforcers?
      • tact/intraverbal
  • normative patterns of emergence
    • 6 months
    • well established and consolidated 12-14 months
    • relation to:
      • symbolic abilities
      • langage - receptive and expressive
      • general socio-cognitive processes
        • e.g., ToM
  • "syndrome specific" pattern in autism - markers in autism
    • pseudoempirical?  - not sure why?
    • early detection problems in JA - can usually be seen by 12 months
    • differential impairment
      • responding
      • initiating - usually more impaired
      • protodeclaratives more severely impaired
• Usefulness
  • identification
  • goals
  • evaluation outcomes
    • no interventions
    • what is the independent variable?
  • cognititve - shared attention mechanism
  • lacking JA - no languages
  • early interventon - few measures and attack of JA
• ESCS - MacDonald 2006
  • respond and intitating - specific tasks
• Emerging behavioral literature
  • whetland - DTT and PRT(2003) - IJA and RJA - separate response classes
  • Jones and Carr (2004) - more than gaze and referencing
  • Dube
  • Rocha, Screibman & Stahmer (2004) - parent training - did not maintain
  • Whelan & Schreibman - asked what are the "intrinsic" reinforcers of protodeclarative JA?
  • Carr - function of JA?
    • share experience
    • adult as generalized reinforcer
      • child choice
      • natural reinforcers - but, what are they? says circular
      • interspersal
    • suggests pairing - but needs more data to determine
  • Dube 2004 - JA as a chained Sr
    • MO --> R (gaze) --> Sr (adult gaze) + R (child gaze shift) --> R (direction Sr)
• ABC
  • A - novel events, line of regard, dicrimination
  • B - many
  • C - Sr with social stimuli
    • Sr+
    • Sr-
• Themes related to verbal behavior
  • speaker - listener
  • mand
  • discrimination of novel events
  • autoclitics
  • JA issues to VB
    • poverty of the stimulus
    • definition of VB
• Speaker/Listener Mand/Tact
  • specific R - responding = listening
  • protoimperitive/declaritive = speaking
• discrimination of novel events
  • skinner speaks about novelty of stimuli
  • autism - problem of discrimination of novelty
• autoclitics
  • MO - s that are correlation with defective listenter reactions - misunderstanding
  • attention-directing an autoclitic
    • look
    • acoustic marking
• tact and JA
  • in presence of...
  • poverty of stimulus - what actually evokes?
    • attention needs to be directed to stimulus
  • contingency in tact training: Sd --> R(attention) + R
  • Sd fades over time - generalized conditioned Ser
• could JA be a relational frame?
  • JA not susally seen in rats - Sr must be social in nature?
• sharing - generalized Sr
  • other gaze
  • not
  • smile
  • relevant comments
  • yes, nod, "sure", "uh-huh"
• Pairing - Lovaas 1966
  • classical conditioning not effective
  • establish conditioned Sr - dual function
  • pairing with Sd procedures - establish new conditioned Sr - NOT VERY EFFECTIVE
  • Sd procedure musch more effective for establishing
    • things spread out
    • when adult nodded Sr was given
    • train gaze following -Sr gaze following
    • seem to maintain over time
• Implications
  • need to train social Sr
  • teach discrimination of novel events
  • decrease overselectivity
  • keep tangible Sr out of sight during training
  • must Sr JA and mands
  • interspersal in the natural environment