Joint Engagement Essay

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Children who are diagnosed with Autism frequently struggle with different areas of engagement, play, and keeping attention in the classroom – particularly younger generations. The three main areas of this intervention involve joint engagement and attention, and symbolic play. Research has presented that children who are not engaged in their learning and classroom activities typically retain less information and are learning less than their engaged classmates. Joint attention is the ability a child has to focus on multiple objects or happenings going on in a given scenario. Joint engagement takes place when the child is working on activities in a group like setting. Both joint engagement and joint attention are occurring significantly less within the classroom for children with autism. Playing – symbolically or pretend occurs when a student is able to use their imagination and play with an object as if it were something else. In many classrooms we see a grey area in which teachers encourage more of a functional playing time opposed to symbolic. Children with autism typically have a harder time imagining an object as something else …show more content…

Flyers were distributed throughout a large metro area and the children included in the intervention all had been clinically diagnosed with autism, and were already involved in a special education services. These children also did not have any other category of diseases or syndromes. The intervention also was randomized in the terms of racial diversity and parental education. 46% were African American, 39% were Hispanic, and the rest varied. 47% of these children’s primary caregivers had completed high school or a lesser amount of education, and 27% had completed college or had training in a trade. Forms were completed by the parents and the teachers to get this background

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