referencing and joint attention

[Guest guest]

,

I hope I am correct that you are soliciting info re what parents of kids on

ASD consider to be the definition/contrast of these two. I can see where it

would be confusing. This just my take:

Joint attention: This is when at least the ASD child and one other person is

looking at and maybe talking about the same thing..that would be an example of

joint attention. For instance, my son does not have joint attention...when

teaching him I am constantly checking his eyes to see that he is staying with me

when we read together. I had to teach him to look at the end of my index finger

in order to share with him what I was seeing out the car window.

Referencing could be that he says " Remember when " and my son does do this when

we have shared some event in the past but he also says it when I have not been

there to see what he is talking about...he just assumes that I know. Also, if a

child reads, referencing could be something that he has to be taught in order to

understand what he is reading; there is an excellent reference to referencing

(I think I'm getting confused!) in Freeman's most excellent book, Teach

Me Language. For those of you who don't have the book, I will try to give you

an example of this in this paragraph (my paragraph, can't find the book right

now): " Tom went to the store. The store was closed so he went to another store

and got candy there. " In this example, referencing in reading, my son would

have difficulty understanding that the pronoun " he " represented the person " Tom "

unless taught.

Hope this helps,

R.