Observing Joint Attention in Children with Autism: The Development of a Video Coding Protocol

Undergraduate Honors Thesis

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Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/undergraduate_honors_theses/mc87pq67b

Abstract

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) exhibit deficits in joint attention behaviors. As joint attention is considered a pivotal skill, it has been recommended that intervention programs target the development of joint attention, but there remains a lack of comparative research on the efficacy and effectiveness these intervention programs. Informal observational measures have been acknowledged as an ecological valid and necessary measure for assessing intervention outcomes in individual children with ASD and in intervention research, but a standardized methodology has yet to be developed. This paper describes the development and preliminary reliability assessment of the Joint Attention Video Coding Protocol, a systematic behavioral coding protocol designed for observing joint attention behaviors of young children with ASD in natural social contexts.

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