OVERVIEW 116 A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER 117 DIAGNOSTIC DESCRIPTION OF ASD 118 JOINT ATTENTION IN TYPICAL DEVELOPMENT 119 Measurement of Subtypes of Joint Attention 120 Learning and the Importance of Joint Attention 121 Joint Attention and the Social-Cognitive Hypothesis 122 THE NEURAL SYSTEMS OF JOINT ATTENTION 123 Social Cognition and the PDPM of Joint Attention 128 I...

This paper reports 2 studies that explore the role of joint attentional processes in the child's acquisition of language. In the first study, 24 children were videotaped at 15 and 21 months of age in naturalistic interaction with their mothers. Episodes of joint attentional focus between mother and child--for example, joint play with an object--were identified. Inside, as opposed to outside, th...

This study investigates to what extent more advanced joint attentional mechanisms, rather than only shared attention between two agents and an object, influence the results of language games played by these agents. We present computer simulations which show that adding constructs that mimic follow attention capabilities increases the performance of agents in these language games substantially. ...

This paper discusses the concept of joint attention and the different skills underlying its development. We argue that joint attention is much more than gaze following or simultaneous looking because it implies a shared intentional relation to the world. The current state-of-the-art in robotic and computational models of the different prerequisites of joint attention is discussed in relation wi...