Abstract
Disturbances in the development of joint attention behaviors and the ability to share affect with others are two important components of the social deficits of young autistic children. We examined the association of shared positive affect during two different communicative contexts, joint attention and requesting. The pattern for the normal children was one of frequent positive affect displayed toward the adult during joint attention situations. Compared to the normal children, the autistic children failed to display high levels of positive affect during joint attention whereas the mentally retarded children displayed high levels of positive affect during requesting as well as joint attention situations. These results lend support to the hypothesis that the joint attention deficits in autistic children also are associated with a disturbance in affective sharing.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adamson, L., & Bakeman, R. (1982). Affectivity and reference: Concepts, methods, and techniques in the study of communication development of 6-to-18-month-oldinfants. In T. Field & A. Fogel (Eds.),Emotion and early interaction (pp. 213–236). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Adamson, L., & Bakeman, R. (1985). Affect and attention: Infants observed with mothers and peers.Child Development, 56, 582–593.
American Psychiatric Association. (1980).Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (3rd ed.). Washington, DC: Author.
Bruner, J. (1981). Learning how to do things with words. In J. Bruner & A. Garton (Eds.),Human Growth and Development (pp. 62–84). London, England: Oxford University Press.
Bruner, J. (1983).Child's talk: Learning to use language. New York: Norton.
Campos, J. J. (1983). The importance of affective communication in social referencing: A commentary on Feinman.Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 29, 83–87.
Dawson, G., Hill, D., Spencer, A., & Galpert, L. (1988).Affective exchanges between young autistic children and their mothers. Paper presented at the International Conference on Infant Studies, Washington, DC.
Feinman, S. (1982). Social referencing in infancy.Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 28, 445–470.
Hannan, T. E. (1987). A cross-sequential assessment of the occurrences of pointing in 3- to 12-month-old human infants.Infant Behavior and Development, 10, 11–22.
Hornik, R., & Gunnar, M. (1988). A descriptive analysis of infant social referencing.Child Development, 59, 626–634.
Howlin, P. (1986). An overview of social behavior in autism. In E. Schopler & G. Mesibov (Eds.),Social behavior in autism (pp. 103–131). New York: Plenum Press.
Izard, C. E. (1979). The maximally discriminative facial movement coding system (MAX). Newark: University of Delaware.
Leung, E., & Rheingold, H. (1981). Development of pointing as a social gesture.Developmental Psychology, 17, 215–220.
Loveland, K., & Landry, S. (1986). Joint attention in autistic and language delayed children.Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 16, 335–350.
Mitchell, S. (1979). Interobserver agreement, reliability, and generalizability of data collected in observational studies.Psychological Bulletin, 86, 376–390.
Mundy, P., & Sigman, M. (1989). Specifying the nature of the social impairment in autism. In G. Dawson (Ed.),Autism: New perspectives on diagnosis, nature, and treatment, (pp. 3–21). New York: Guilford.
Mundy, P., Sigman, M., & Kasan, C. (1990). A longitudinal study of joint attention and language development in autistic children.Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 20, 115–128.
Mundy, P., Sigman, M., Ungerer, J. A., & Sherman, T. (1986). Defining the social deficits in autism: The contribution of nonverbal communication measures.Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 27, 657–669.
Rheingold, H. L., Hay, D. G., & West, M. J. (1976). Sharing in the second year of life.Child Development, 47, 1148–1158.
Sigman, M., Mundy, P., Sherman, T. & Ungerer, J. A. (1986). Social interactions of autistic, mentally retarded, and normal children with their caregivers.Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 27, 647–655.
Snow, M. E., Hertzig, M. E., & Shapiro, T. (1987). Expressions of emotion in young autistic children.Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 26, 836–838.
Sugarman, S. (1984). The development of preverbal communication. In R. L. Schiefelbusch & J. Pickar (Eds.),The acquisition of communicative competence (pp. 23–67). Baltimore: University Park Press.
Walden, T., & Ogan, T. (1988). The development of social referencing.Child Development, 59, 1230–1240.
Yirmiya, N., Kasan, C., Sigman, M., & Munday, P. (1989). Facial expressions of affect in autistic, mentally retarded, and normal children.Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 30, 725–735.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
This research was supported by NIMH grant MH 33815, NICHD grant HD17662, and NINCDS grant NS 25243. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Angie Peña and Larry Epstein for their careful coding of child behaviors, Dolores Adams and Scott Komo for data analyses, and Jung Hye Kwon for analyses of reliability data. We also appreciate the helpful comments of Sondra Purdue on an earlier draft of this paper.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kasari, C., Sigman, M., Mundy, P. et al. Affective sharing in the context of joint attention interactions of normal, autistic, and mentally retarded children. J Autism Dev Disord 20, 87–100 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02206859
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02206859