title: Gearing up to a new activity: how teachers use object adjustments to manage the attention of children with autism.
abstract: Children with autism have characteristic difficulties with joint attention. In educational settings, this can present a challenge when directing a child's attention to new objects and activities. Drawing on videotaped interactions between teachers and two children with autism recorded in Finland, we use conversation analysis to examine how teachers manage such transitions during one-to-one teaching. We show how adjusting material objects can be used to manage the child's engagement and how these adjustments can escalate into more conspicuous actions so as to direct the child's attention. Rather than examining participants' use of communicational objects, we are instead concerned with practices that use task-related objects. We thereby offer an empirically grounded account of the interactional practices involved in achieving joint attention through the objects themselves.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Roehampton, London, UK. t.korkiakangas@imperial.ac.uk
authors.forename: Terhi K
authors.initials: TK
authors.lastname: Korkiakangas
authors.forename: John P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Rae
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D003142:Communication; D005133:Eye Movements; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D013663:Teaching / Q000379:methods*; D014741:Video Recording