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Abstract
Joint attention is an essential early social-communication skill, which is strongly associated with social and language development. Children with autism usually exhibit deficits in joint attention. This study examined the effectiveness of training of joint attention bids to three partners of a child with autism. The study was conducted in the childs home including the three-year-old child with autism, his mother, sister and babysitter. The results indicate that all partners increased their use of joint attention bids during the intervention phase of the study. They increased their use of each joint attention bid as well as their total joint attention bids. The child with autism increased contingent responses to each joint attention bid with all three partners during intervention. The three partners used the touching/showing bid most frequently during both baseline and intervention. However, the giving bid yielded the most contingent responses.