Indiana University, USA.
University of North Carolina, USA.
Autism. 2022 Aug;26(6):1536-1549. doi: 10.1177/13623613211061128. Epub 2021 Nov 26.
Little is known about what parents can do to promote initiating joint attention for their toddlers with autism. Initiating joint attention is important because it is an indicator of social motivation and is associated with later communication ability. In this study, parents applied mediated learning principles to help their toddlers engage with them socially. The principles included helping their child focus on social interaction, giving meaning to the social elements of interaction (and de-emphasizing nonsocial elements), and helping their toddlers understand their own social ability by encouraging. At the end of the intervention period, we compared two groups. One group received the Joint Attention Mediated Learning intervention and the other received community-based early intervention services. We found that the Joint Attention Mediated Learning participants applied mediated learning principles more often than the other group. Then, we explored how parents' application of mediated learning principles related to toddler initiating joint attention and found that parents who were successful in applying the principles had toddlers who were more likely to show initiating joint attention. Our findings indicate that the mediated learning process shows promise as a way to promote early social learning, although other elements of the Joint Attention Mediated Learning intervention, such as actively engaging parents in the learning process, may have also contributed to both child and parent learning.
关于父母可以做些什么来促进自闭症幼儿开始共同注意，人们知之甚少。开始共同注意很重要，因为它是社会动机的指标，与以后的沟通能力有关。在这项研究中，父母应用中介学习原则来帮助他们的幼儿与他们进行社交。这些原则包括帮助孩子关注社交互动，赋予互动的社会元素意义（并淡化非社会元素），以及通过鼓励帮助孩子理解自己的社交能力。在干预期结束时，我们比较了两组。一组接受了共同注意中介学习干预，另一组接受了基于社区的早期干预服务。我们发现，共同注意中介学习组比另一组更经常应用中介学习原则。然后，我们探讨了父母应用中介学习原则与幼儿开始共同注意的关系，发现成功应用这些原则的父母的孩子更有可能表现出开始共同注意。我们的研究结果表明，中介学习过程有望成为促进早期社会学习的一种方法，尽管共同注意中介学习干预的其他元素，如让父母积极参与学习过程，也可能对孩子和父母的学习都有贡献。
