Investigating the Effect of Joint Attention Training on the Degree of Social Initiation-Responding of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Single-Subject Research

ASD engenders a lot of problems for children. Social initiation-response is one of these problems having significant effects on children’s developmental skills. Accordingly, the present study aimed to investigate the effect of joint attention training on the degree of social initiation-response of children with ASD.
The population of the study included all children with ASD in the City of Isfahan. Since the present study was to find specific or non-normal cases, the purposive sampling method was used. Accordingly, three children aged under 6 years old with symptoms of ASD were selected as subjects. The research instruments were the Gilliam Autism Rating Scale and Validation of the Behavioral Assessment of Social Interaction in Young Children (BASYC). In the present study, the single-subject research with A-B design and follow-up was employed.
Mean scores for the three subjects in the baseline state as 39.95, 40.77, and 40.37 reached 51.05, 50.05, and 50.37 in the intervention state. During visual analysis of charts of data, intervention in the three subjects was effective. The PND in the two baseline and intervention for the three participants were 70%, 90%, and 90% respectively. This effectiveness can be observed in the intervention state.
Regarding the obtained results, it can be judged that joint attention training is an appropriate method for improving social initiation-response in children with ASD and it can be used in educational and health centers of children with ASD.