What are you looking at? Joint attention and visual perspective taking in young children with autism spectrum disorder

This study investigated joint attention and visual perspective taking abilities in young children. Twenty children with autism spectrum disorder in the age range of 3-7 years, and 20 age-matched control children participated in the study. Joint attention was assessed by a spontaneous gaze monitoring task, and two tasks measuring eye contact in ambiguous situations. Visual perspective taking was measured using a Level 1 task [(Flavell, J. H., 1978). Nebraska symposium on motivation, Vol. 25, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln]. The children with autism spectrum disorder were not only found to be impaired in their joint attention abilities, but they also showed problems on the visual perspective taking task. These results suggest that the basic dyadic person-object processes may develop in a slower and perhaps qualitatively different way in children with autism spectrum disorder.