Leekam S R, Hunnisett E, Moore C
Department of Psychology, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK.
J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 1998 Oct;39(7):951-62.
Children with autism are known to have difficulties in sharing attention with others. Yet one joint attention behaviour, the ability to follow another person's head turn and gaze direction, may be achieved without necessarily sharing attention. Why, then, should autistic children have difficulties with it? In this study we examined the extent of this difficulty by testing school-aged autistic children across three different contexts; experiment, observation, and parent interview. We also tested whether the ability to orient to another person's head and gaze could be facilitated by increasing children's attention to environmental targets and social cues. Results for experiment and observation demonstrate that a sizeable proportion of children with autism did not have difficulties with following another's head turn. There was a difference between children with high and low verbal mental ages, however. Whereas children with higher mental ages (over 48 months) were able to orient spontaneously to another person's head turn, children with lower mental ages had difficulties with this response. When cues were added (pointing, language) or when feedback from targets was given, however, their performance improved. Parent interview data indicated that children with autism, whatever their mental age, began to follow head turn and gaze direction years later than typically developing children. Developments in attention and language are proposed as possible factors to account for this developmental delay.
已知患有自闭症的儿童在与他人共享注意力方面存在困难。然而，一种共同注意力行为，即跟随他人头部转动和注视方向的能力，不一定需要共享注意力就能实现。那么，为什么自闭症儿童在这方面会有困难呢？在这项研究中，我们通过在三种不同情境下对学龄期自闭症儿童进行测试，来考察这种困难的程度；这三种情境分别是实验、观察和家长访谈。我们还测试了通过增加儿童对环境目标和社交线索的注意力，是否能够促进他们对他人头部和注视方向的定向能力。实验和观察结果表明，相当一部分自闭症儿童在跟随他人头部转动方面没有困难。然而，高语言心理年龄和低语言心理年龄的儿童之间存在差异。心理年龄较高（超过48个月）的儿童能够自发地对他人的头部转动做出定向反应，而心理年龄较低的儿童在这种反应上存在困难。然而，当添加线索（指向、语言）或给出目标反馈时，他们的表现有所改善。家长访谈数据表明，无论心理年龄如何，自闭症儿童开始跟随头部转动和注视方向的时间都比正常发育的儿童晚数年。注意力和语言的发展被认为是导致这种发育延迟的可能因素。
