Eye Contact, Joint Attention, and Autism: Session 238 with Francesca Degli Espinosa

Published: Sept. 14, 2023, 6 p.m.

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What exactly is Joint Attention? How does Joint Attention interact with Eye Contact? What does the literature say about these repertoires, and how does that coincide with self-reports of the aversive nature of eye contact from Autistic people?\\xa0

These have been a few of the questions rolling around in my head for some time. A few years ago, we briefly touched on this subject with my guest today, Dr. Francesca Degli Espinosa, but it was in the backdrop of a larger panel discussion at the 2022 Verbal Behavior Conference.\\xa0

Fast forward to 2023, I recently heard Francesca on Dr. Mary Barbera\'s show talk about Joint Attention in great detail, so I asked her to join me to extend the conversation.\\xa0

In this show, we cover:

  • What people mean when they use the term Joint Attention
  • How JA typically develops in infancy and beyond
  • Why \'attention\' may not be an especially helpful term
  • Some of the neuroscience and eye tracking studies that have examined the development of eye contact in typically developing and Autistic populations
  • How to increase the value of looking at peoples\' faces
  • Why eye contact should be thought of as a reinforcing consequence\\xa0
  • Some strategies to foster JA in the context of learner assent
  • The difficulty of integrating the findings of different literatures that publish research in the area of Autism
  • What she\'s talking about at this year\'s\\xa0Stone Soup Conference\\xa0(spoiler alert: She\'s going to go deep into this topic, and remember, save on your registration by using the promo code PODCAST)
  • The problem associated with teaching eye contact via the \'look at me\' method

Here are some of the links to the many resources we discussed:

This podcast is brought to you by:

The Stone Soup Conference, which is taking place on October 20th. Use code PODCAST to save on your registration as well.

The University of Cincinnati Online. UC Online designed a Master of Education in Behavior Analysis program that is 100% online and asynchronous, meaning you log on when it works for you. Want to learn more? Go to\\xa0online.uc.edu\\xa0and click the \\u201crequest info\\u201d button.

Behavior University.\\xa0Their mission is to provide university quality professional development for the busy Behavior Analyst. Learn about their CEU offerings, including their brand new 8-hour Supervision Course, as well as their RBT offerings over at\\xa0behavioruniversity.com/observations.

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