ABSTRACT
Initiation of Joint Attention (IJA) has been considered essential in the establishment of human social interaction for children with autism spectrum disorder. Three aspects are involved in such skill, namely, communication, language and social interaction. The goals of this study are, first, to increase the rate of prompting and reinforcement a father delivers to his child with pervasive developmental disorder, not otherwise specified and, second, to determine the effects of increased prompt and reinforcement on the child’s IJA. An A–B design study was set up, and the effects of the 23-session programme were measured before and after the intervention. The results reveal that, following the training, the father slightly increased use of prompt and reinforcement, but was unsuccessful in improving the child’s IJA. The length of programme, child’s perseverative interest in a certain object, child’s ability in perceiving eye gaze, and measurement of programme effectiveness were among the factors considered to contribute to the result of the study.
