Trial reportJournal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines2021
Joint engagement is a potential mechanism leading to increased initiations of joint attention and downstream effects on language: JASPER early intervention for children with ASD.
Trial report in Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 37 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
37 citing papers in PubMed, 63 citations in OpenAlex.
- Early intervention increases reactive joint attention in autistic preschoolers with arousal regulation as mediator.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2025Trial
- Adaptive Intervention for School-Age, Minimally Verbal Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder in the Community: Primary Aim Results.Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry · 2025Trial
- Characterizing mechanisms of caregiver-mediated naturalistic developmental behavioral interventions for autistic toddlers: A randomized clinical trial.Autism : the international journal of research and practice · 2024Trial
- Mediation of 6-year mid-childhood follow-up outcomes after pre-school social communication (PACT) therapy for autistic children: randomised controlled trial.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2024Trial
- Spoken language outcomes in limited language preschoolers with autism and global developmental delay: RCT of early intervention approaches.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2023Trial
- Supporting peer engagement for low-income preschool students with autism spectrum disorder during academic instruction: A pilot randomized trial.Autism : the international journal of research and practice · 2022Trial
- Feasibility of delivering parent-implemented NDBI interventions in low-resource regions: a pilot randomized controlled study.Journal of neurodevelopmental disorders · 2022Trial
- Research Trends and Emerging Directions in Non-Pharmacological Interventions for Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Bibliometric Analysis (2001-2025).Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Secondary Analysis of a Brief Parent-Implemented NDBI on Activity-Engaged Triadic Interactions Within Mother-Child Dyads.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Optimizing joint engagement in autism: considering toddler developmental abilities and caregiver stress.Frontiers in child and adolescent psychiatry · 2026Article
- Joint Engagement and Socially Motivated Language in Young Autistic Children.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2025Article
- The Role of Pathways Early Autism Intervention in Improving Social Skills and Respeto for Young Hispanic Autistic Children.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2025Article
- Generalisation of Social Communication Skills by Autistic Children During Play-Based Assessments Across Home, School and an Unfamiliar Research Setting.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2025Article
- Caregiver strategies before intervention moderate caregiver fidelity and maintenance in RCT of JASPER intervention with autistic toddlers.JCPP advances · 2025Article
- Pragmatic performance, its relationship with symptom severity, and early clinical predictors of pragmatics in 5 ~ 6-year-old children with autism spectrum disorder.BMC psychiatry · 2025Article
- Autism Early Intervention - Progress, Steps Backward, and the Reconciliation of Conflicting Narratives.Current psychiatry reports · 2024Review
- Developmental Play Skills as Outcomes of Early Intervention.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2024Article
- Characterizing social communication among minimally verbal children with autism: An application of item response theory.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2024Article
- Patterns of spontaneous neural activity associated with social communication abilities among infants and toddlers showing signs of autism.The European journal of neuroscience · 2024Article
- Profiles of minimally verbal autistic children: Illuminating the neglected end of the spectrum.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundSocial communication interventions benefit children with ASD in early childhood. However, the mechanisms behind such interventions have not been rigorously explored. This study examines the mechanism underlying a naturalistic developmental behavioral intervention, JASPER (Joint Attention, Symbolic Play, Engagement, and Regulation), delivered by educators in the community. Specifically, the analyses focus on the mediating effect of joint engagement on children's initiations of joint attention (IJA) skills and whether IJA postintervention are associated with later gains in children's receptive and expressive language.
methodsOne hundred seventy-nine children, age 2-5 years, were randomized to immediate JASPER treatment or waitlist (treatment as usual) control. Independent assessors blinded to time and treatment coded children's time jointly engaged and IJA during a 10-min teacher-child interaction at baseline, exit, and follow-up. Age-equivalent receptive and expressive language scores from the Mullen Scales of Early Learning were collected at baseline and follow-up. Mediation analyses with linear mixed models were used to explore the potential mediating effect of joint engagement on IJA.
resultsJoint engagement significantly mediated 69% of the intervention effect on young children's IJA and IJA predicted improvements in standardized language scores.
conclusionsSmall but sustained changes in child-initiated joint engagement improved IJA, a core challenge in children with ASD, which in turn led to improvements in language.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.