學齡前自閉症兒童相互注意協調能力的發展

本研究探討自閉症與發展遲緩兒童在相互注意協調能力（joint attention, JA）的發展。以六名自閉症兒童（五男一女，平均年齡五歲一個月，操作智商平均為72.1 ,平均發言句長為2.15），及性別、年齡、智商和平均發言句長相當的發展遲緩配對組兒童為樣本，自然觀察親子互動情形，分析JA的橫斷發展。研究的主要發現是：1、在主動的JA方面，相對於發展遲緩兒童，自閉症兒童並未呈現JA缺陷，他們已發展出眼光交替、手指指示和展示等能力；2、在母親引發兒童JA方面，兩組母親表現出的溝通方法無異。本研究結果並不支持自閉症患者早期心理病理機制是來自於JA缺陷的假設。唯本研究為自然觀察法，且受試樣本較少，在推論上有其限制，研究者提出後續研究必須進行的方向。

This study explores joint attention (JA) development between children with autism (CA)and development delay (DD). The subject consists of 6 autistic children (five boys and one girl)and 6 children with DD, matched on one-to-one basis for sex, age, performance IQ and mean length utterance (MLU). Trained assistants visited the home of the subjects to video-tape the mother-child interaction for 60 minutes. The frame of JA analysis is consisted of two kinds. The former, namely active JA, includes alternate gaze, pointing and showing by the child. The latter includes pointing or touching or combination of them by child's mother. The analysis reveals the following two major findings: 1. CA perform intact active JA, they express as many frequencies of alternate gaze, pointing, and showing as DD; 2. The CA's mothers use varieties of communicative methods similar to the control mothers in natural mother-child interactions. The result does not support the joint attention deficit hypothesis in early development of autism. Due to natural observation method in this study, the authors recommend that further JA studies should be done with different methodology.