Autism and Joint Attention

Joint Attention is often thought to require catching another's eye and a willingness to look in the eye.

It has long seemed to me that if we understood the origins of speech, we would better understand what it is that sets humanity apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. Many people come at the issue from the other end. They claim to identify what it is that sets humanity apart, and then try to relate their conclusion to speech. The proposed X factor might be rational thought, recursive syntax, having a theory of mind, symbolic thinking, tool using, etc. Sometimes the proposed X turns out to exist elsewhere in the primate world, but even when the assumption stands, the approach turns the problem of speech origins into a two step affair:

1. Explain the origins of X, and,
2. given X, explain the origins of speech.

I have tried to simplify the problem by coming at from the other end. Learn something about the origins of speech and see what X emerges. After last week’s post (here) it seems to me that an X may have emerged.

The speech triangle—the joint attention of speaker and listener to a neutral topic—appears to be unique to humans. Furthermore, if you can explain the origins of the speech triangle, you have explained where speakers, listeners, and topics came from. Other issues such as the introduction of syntax and metaphor will remain, but assuming they followed the creation of the speech triangle, their unique existence among humans is much less mysterious. We alone have the speech triangle, so we alone have its rhetorical features.

But there is a second test for X. Besides being unique to humans, it should be universal among them. If you argue that humans are unlike animals because no animal has X, you have a problem if many humans don’t have X either. If X, for example, is symbolic thinking, what do you do about all the literally-minded, concrete thinkers? Read them out of the human race? It is not an unprecedented solution, but it points down a dangerous path. There is no quicker way to lose one’s rights than to be declared non- or sub-human.

I have long worried about this question as it regards the speech triangle and joint attention, because there is a category of people who seem to lack both. These are the autistics among us. Many don’t speak at all, and they seem to be incapable of joint attention. Paradoxically, much of what we know about joint attention comes out of autism-centered research. According to an essay in the April issue of Child Development Perspectives by Morton Ann Gernsbacher and others (See “Why does joint attention look atypical in autism?” abstract here) half of all scholarly studies about joint attention have examined autistic development. Do these studies have anything to teach us about the basis of joint attention?

Maybe, but the Gernsbacher team’s article makes me wonder if autism-and-joint-attention is a red herring, as far as speech origins are concerned. The paper argues that the problem facing autistics is not one of joint attention, but an inability to effectively invite others to share attention with them.

Some of the evidence proposed for this position is, at best, ambiguous. For example, the authors report, “Autistics attend covertly even to social stimuli, such as the direction in which another person’s eyes are gazing.” [p. 39] The trouble with this details is that apes in the wild also attend to one another’s gaze. It is a way of competing, not sharing. Joint attention is by definition not a covert act, and covertly learning what the neighbors are up to is no evidence an interest in sharing one’s knowledge with others. So I will skip over the article’s many details about autistics’ unusual powers of concentration, covert attention, and attention in parallel.

More valuable are the refutations of claims made about autistics. For example, it turns out there is no data supporting the widely voiced claim that autistics do not know that others have minds and cannot determine the intentions of others. “Every empirical study to date has shown that autistic individuals across a wide age range are capable of understanding the intentions of other people’s actions.” [p 40]

But the basic fact about autistics and joint attention seems to remain. Bids for their joint attention typically fail, and they do not solicit the joint attention of others.

So, what have we here? Are the authors claiming that autistics are an unusually furtive lot, sneaking their way through social settings? No; the paper’s argument is that “autistics atypically execute volitional action.” [p 42] In other words, they have trouble controlling their actions. Many tests for joint attention turn out to be the same as tests for motor disorders. For example, joint attention can be tested by directing attention to a stimulus and checking to see if the testee looks. But the same test is used for gaze apraxia, a motor inability to coordinate one’s gaze with a stimulus. So a diagnosis of joint-attention disorder, turns out to be simultaneously a diagnosis of trouble coordinating one’s behavior. Which diagnosis is more accurate?

The Gernsbacher et al. report assembles the evidence for a motor diagnosis.

• Autistics also have a much harder time nodding their head up and down than shaking it from side to side. The two tasks seem similar, but are controlled by two separate motor pathways.
• Autistics are also “challenged” by gesture production. Last week’s post noted that while apes do not gesture about topics, they do use imperative gestures that ask for things. Imperative gestures include things like begging/asking for food. Autistics who do not point to topics, however, do not point imperatively either. Thus, the problem does appear to be more motor-oriented than communicative.

The authors conclude:

Such data suggest that it is the core act of pointing and its underlying motor demands rather than any deficit in intentionality or desire to share experience that underlies autistic children’s lower frequency of pointing to initiate joint attention. … We submit that autistics do initiate joint attention, perhaps even as frequently as their non-autistic peers, but they do so in atypical and unconventional ways. [p. 42]

It is a radical conclusion, dismissing as it does a mountain of work, and this blog is in no position to support or challenge it. I do wish the authors had provided some examples of the ways in which autistic children try to initiate joint attention, but at least their article is enough to make me suspect that my occasional forays into trying to determine what autism and its relatives might tell us about joint attention has probably been misguided.

Comments

[watercat]

The communicative triangle is a far better X than the near universal assumption that all humans have language. Those Nicaraguan children for example who did not experience the social interactions at Bluefields did not create language, and grew into adults with at best a so-called 'protolanguage'. Judy Kegl located over four hundred such alinguals in a country the size of Maryland, yet linguists maintain their theories by denying such people exist. They are often considered non- or sub-human and denied rights due to their language problems, even though they participate in society, raise families, and hold jobs, communicating by use of the joint attention triangle.
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BLOGGER: It's a fair point. All human societies have language, but there are people who for a variety of reasons were shut off from society at a critical period and have, at best, protolanguage.