{"id":15273,"date":"2018-10-02T00:46:39","date_gmt":"2018-10-01T14:46:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.opt.net.au\/?p=15273"},"modified":"2020-09-29T21:15:43","modified_gmt":"2020-09-29T11:15:43","slug":"autism-spectrum-disorder-social-communication","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/opt.net.au\/optimum-life\/autism-spectrum-disorder-social-communication\/","title":{"rendered":"Autism Spectrum Disorder & Social Communication"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whenever a meet a person with autism, I learn something new. Each person is made up of a unique set of skills, behaviours, talents, and interests, and no two are ever the same! Because of this, it\u2019s difficult to say what children with autism have in common, but we do know that for many people, social communication skills present a significant area of difference to typically developing kids. In order to understand these differences, we need to understand how social communication typically emerges in kids without autism.<\/span><\/p>\n

Birth to 6 Months<\/span><\/h3>\n

In this early stage, babies look at their caregivers, imitated their facial expressions, and begin to focus on one person or object. This is called dyadic interaction, meaning that they can\u2019t shift their attention between two things, and is important because this kind of interaction is essential for building social connections. Smiling between parents and infants helps develop skills like reciprocal turn taking, understanding facial expression, and anticipation of what\u2019s to come.<\/span><\/p>\n

6 to 12 Months<\/span><\/h3>\n

In this period, babies begin to use those gorgeous smiles to initiate interactions. Their smiles begin to mean, \u2018Hey! Look at me! Let\u2019s chat!\u2019 Here is where they develop triadic interactions, meaning they can look at you, up at that plane in the sky and then back to you, as if to say, \u2018Hey did you see that? Look!\u2019 This skill is necessary for us to develop joint attention.<\/span>
\nJoint attention is a big milestone! It means you and I are both sharing an interaction together, and we both understand we are sharing it together. Think about going to the movies with someone. Something hilarious happens on screen, and you and your movie buddies laugh and look at each other. You two understand that you\u2019re both sharing the joke together, you\u2019re sharing joint attention. You\u2019re not sharing joint attention with all the other people in the cinema though, even though they experienced the same thing, they didn\u2019t experience it with you. <\/span>
\nBy 12 months of age, typically developing kids can share attention with you and direct your attention to something interesting. This is essential in developing communication and social skills. When your child is interested in something and you\u2019re both paying attention to it, you are able to give it a name, like \u2018plane!\u2019, hello language development!<\/span><\/p>\n

Social Communication in Kids with Autism<\/span><\/h3>\n

Often, children with autism experience impairment in the development of their joint attention skills. This can get in the way of typical social connection. Typically developing kids will simultaneously learn to use joint attention for both requesting AND interacting socially. Children with autism will often learn these skills one at a time, commonly in the following order;<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  • Directing attention to request without looking at the adult, for example pulling you to the fridge<\/span><\/li>\n
  • Directing attention to request and alternating gaze between the adult and the thing they want<\/span><\/li>\n
  • Responding to joint attention, for example looking at something you point at<\/span><\/li>\n
  • Directing attention to share interests without looking at the adult<\/span><\/li>\n
  • Initiating joint attention and sharing gaze between person and object, for example showing you something they like, looking at it and looking at you<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    We can see that children with autism start out by interacting in order to request (\u2018I want this!\u2019), and later they might develop interacting for a social purpose (\u2018Have you seen this great thing!\u2019). Having trouble with joint attention can make it tricky to develop language for some of these little ones. <\/span><\/p>\n

    For children with autism, communication, and social language development happen in a different way to typically developing children. It\u2019s important for us to understand that, adapt to it, appreciate these wonderful differences and identify the skills that are most important to learn.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Whenever a meet a person with autism, I learn something new. Each person is made up of a unique set of skills, behaviours, talents, and interests, and no two are ever the same! Because of this, it\u2019s difficult to say what children with autism have in common, but we do know that for many people, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[479,631],"tags":[542,591,597],"studio_location":[],"service":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opt.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15273"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opt.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opt.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opt.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opt.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/opt.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15273\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opt.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opt.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opt.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15273"},{"taxonomy":"studio_location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opt.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/studio_location?post=15273"},{"taxonomy":"service","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opt.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/service?post=15273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}