There has been growing evidence that autistic traits are more represented in children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The purpose of this study was to investigate autistic traits associated with responding joint attention (RJA) abilities and face scanning patterns using eye-tracking in children with ADHD, and to compare with typically developing peers (TDs). All child participants viewed a series of videos related to male and female children under congruent and incongruent conditions during eye-tracking evaluation. The object and face regions of the models within the videos were determined as areas of interest (AOIs). Children with ADHD had significantly elevated ratings of autistic traits than TDs. Time course analysis of the proportion of fixations (PoF) on object region determined that children with ADHD tended to show more interest in the objects and had higher PoF on face interest area, including eyes and mouth compared to TD children in the videos when the male/female model shifts his/her gaze to the corner. Higher SRS scores were associated with higher PoF on the Face AOI in both groups. Given these findings, social skill interventions directly targeting the core deficits of RJA and problems in facial scanning appears to be beneficial in children with ADHD.

This paper proposes a model for developmental psychopathology that is informed by recent research suggestive of a single model of mental health disorder (the p factor) and seeks to integrate the role of the wider social and cultural environment into our model, which has previously been more narrowly focused on the role of the immediate caregiving context. Informed by recently emerging thinking on the social and culturally driven nature of human cognitive development, the ways in which humans are primed to learn and communicate culture, and a mentalizing perspective on the highly intersubjective nature of our capacity for affect regulation and social functioning, we set out a cultural-developmental approach to psychopathology.

To understand the complex relationships between autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and other frequently comorbid conditions, a growing number of studies have investigated the emergence of ASD during infancy. This research has suggested that symptoms of ASD and highly related comorbid conditions emerge from complex interactions between neurodevelopmental vulnerabilities and early environments, indicating that developing treatments to prevent ASD is highly challenging. However, it also suggests that attenuating the negative effects of ASD on future development once identified is possible. The present paper builds on this by conceptualizing developmental delays in nonsocial skills as the potential product of altered caregiver–infant interactions following the emergence of ASD during infancy. And, following emerging findings from caregiver–infant dyadic head-mounted eye-tracking (D-ET) research, it also suggests that a multiple pathway model of joint attention can provide mechanistic insights into how ASD alters the ability of caregiver and infant to create a context for infant learning. The potential for this view to inform early intervention is further discussed and illustrated through D-ET data collected prior to and following a brief, parent-mediated intervention for infant ASD. While promising, further research informing how a multiple pathway model of joint attention can inform ASD early intervention is needed.

This paper considers Arbib's hypothesis that (oral) language has its roots in gesture in light of recent research on demonstratives, joint attention, and deictic pointing (Michael Arbib. 2012. How the brain got language: The Mirror System Hypothesis. Oxford: Oxford University Press). It is argued that demonstratives provide an important link between gesture, discourse, and grammar that rests on their communicative function to coordinate the interlocutors' focus of attention. Combining evidence from linguistic typology and historical linguistics with evidence from research on social cognition, the paper argues that demonstratives constitute a universal class of linguistic expressions that are commonly used in combination with a deictic pointing gesture to establish joint attention, a cognitive phenomenon that is closely related to Arbib's notion of “complex imitation”. No other class of linguistic expressions is so closely tied to the speaker's body and gesture than demonstratives. However, demonstratives are not only used to focus the language users' attention on concrete entities in the surrounding situation, they are also used to organize the information flow in discourse, which in turn underlies their frequent development into a wide range of grammatical markers, e.g. definite articles, third person pronouns, relative markers, complementizers, subordinate conjunctions, copulas, and focus markers. In this way, demonstratives provide an explicit link between gesture, imitation, and grammar that is consistent with Arbib's theory of the evolution of language.

We present in broad outline a theory of document acts, using the influential Supreme Court opinion in Marbury v. Madison (1803) as our principal test case. Marbury has a superabundance of rhetorical questions. They make up a significant and stylistically prominent portion of the total linguistic material of the text, yet they all but disappear from Marbury’s citation history and thus its content as an enduring jurisprudential entity. To account for these facts, we examine Marbury as a whole text addressing a particular situation, as a pastiche of constructions, and as a tool of jurisprudential decision-making. The intersection and independence of these ‘modes of being’ call for an overarching theoretical framework capable of accounting for facets of documents’ existence at three distinct but interpenetrating strata: system, artifact, and construction. We base our theory on primordial cognitive capacities for joint attention and joint commitments, with the strata as consequences of embodied human minds born into and embedded in intersubjective environments filled with and shaped by documents and their circulation. The closed system of United States Supreme Court opinions makes an excellent case for a theory of document acts that will eventually be used to understand and explain more open-ended systems.

Core social interaction behaviors were examined in young children 0–36 months of age who were hospitalized for accidental (n = 61) or inflicted (n = 64) traumatic brain injury (TBI) in comparison to typically developing children (n = 60). Responding to and initiating gaze and joint attention (JA) were evaluated during a semi-structured sequence of social interactions between the child and an examiner at 2 and 12 months after injury. The accidental TBI group established gaze less often and had an initial deficit initiating JA that resolved by the follow-up. Contrary to expectation, children with inflicted TBI did not have lower rates of social engagement than other groups. Responding to JA was more strongly related than initiating JA to measures of injury severity and to later cognitive and social outcomes. Compared to complicated-mild/moderate TBI, severe TBI in young children was associated with less responsiveness in social interactions and less favorable caregiver ratings of communication and social behavior. JA response, family resources, and group interacted to predict outcomes. Children with inflicted TBI who were less socially responsive and had lower levels of family resources had the least favorable outcomes. Low social responsiveness after TBI may be an early marker for later cognitive and adaptive behavior difficulties. (JINS, 2013, 19, 1–11)

Organisms engage in various activities that are directed at objects, whether real or imagined. Such activities may be termed “intentional relations.” We present a four-level framework of social understanding that organizes the ways in which social organisms represent the intentional relations of themselves and other agents. We presuppose that the information available to an organism about its own intentional relations (or first person information) is qualitatively different from the information available to that organism about other agents’ intentional relations (or third person information). However, through the integration of these two sources of information, it is possible to generate representations of intentional relations that are uniformly applicable to the activities of both self and other. The four levels of the framework differ in the extent to which such integration occurs and in the degree to which imagination is involved in generating these representations. Most animals exist at the lowest level, at which integration of first and third person sources of information does not occur. Of nonhuman species, only great apes exhibit social understanding at intermediate levels, at which integration of these sources of information provides uniform representations of intentional relations. Only humans attain the highest level, at which it is possible to represent intentional relations with mental objects. We propose that with the development of the imagination, children progress through three stages, equivalent to the later three levels of the framework. The abnormalities in social understanding of autistic individuals are hypothesized to result from a failure to develop integrated representations of intentional relations.

We propose that the crucial difference between human cognition and that of other species is the ability to participate with others in collaborative activities with shared goals and intentions: shared intentionality. Participation in such activities requires not only especially powerful forms of intention reading and cultural learning, but also a unique motivation to share psychological states with others and unique forms of cognitive representation for doing so. The result of participating in these activities is species-unique forms of cultural cognition and evolution, enabling everything from the creation and use of linguistic symbols to the construction of social norms and individual beliefs to the establishment of social institutions. In support of this proposal we argue and present evidence that great apes (and some children with autism) understand the basics of intentional action, but they still do not participate in activities involving joint intentions and attention (shared intentionality). Human children's skills of shared intentionality develop gradually during the first 14 months of life as two ontogenetic pathways intertwine: (1) the general ape line of understanding others as animate, goal-directed, and intentional agents; and (2) a species-unique motivation to share emotions, experience, and activities with other persons. The developmental outcome is children's ability to construct dialogic cognitive representations, which enable them to participate in earnest in the collectivity that is human cognition.

Children with autism are known to have difficulties in sharing attention with others. Yet one joint attention behaviour, the ability to follow another person's head turn and gaze direction, may be achieved without necessarily sharing attention. Why, then, should autistic children have difficulties with it? In this study we examined the extent of this difficulty by testing school-aged autistic children across three different contexts; experiment, observation, and parent interview. We also tested whether the ability to orient to another person's head and gaze could be facilitated by increasing children's attention to environmental targets and social cues. Results for experiment and observation demonstrate that a sizeable proportion of children with autism did not have difficulties with following another's head turn. There was a difference between children with high and low verbal mental ages, however. Whereas children with higher mental ages (over 48 months) were able to orient spontaneously to another person's head turn, children with lower mental ages had difficulties with this response. When cues were added (pointing, language) or when feedback from targets was given, however, their performance improved. Parent interview data indicated that children with autism, whatever their mental age, began to follow head turn and gaze direction years later than typically developing children. Developments in attention and language are proposed as possible factors to account for this developmental delay.