Preverbal and Joint Attention Skills

Preverbal skills are skills that are required before a child starts communicating intelligibly. These skills are eye contact, attention and concentration. Yes, in that order. Why? Well, in my opinion when a child is able to maintain eye contact or even look at the speaker when the speaker is talking or smiling, the child would like to pay attention to the activity that is being conducted and would then be able to concentrate entirely on a task when you (the speaker) have gotten the child’s attention. Imitation skills, gestures and learning of facial expression is only possible if the child maintains eye contact, attention and concentration with the speaker.

How can this be done? From my own experience, as a Speech Language Specialist, I would engage the child in a play activity. Toys such as bubbles, teddy bear, alphabet or number mat, that are colourful would attract their attention. We often forget that the things around us such as the tree, birds, butterflies, sun, cloud, anything around us are things that can be used as a tool to engaging a child to a conversation by saying ‘hey, look I see a bird, it’s black in colour!’ by pointing at it, in this way, you are showing the child what a bird is , the colour of it and you have gotten the child to listen and look. 

Once you have gotten the child’s attention toward an activity, the child will be able to concentrate as they have maintained eye contact. Then we can move on to Joint attention skills. Joint attention skills are skills that involves those preverbal skills(i.e. eye contact, attention, concentration) with an addition of language skills. One of my favourite activity for joint attention skills are 

1. Playing with bubbles - It may seems like a normal toy but it works as a tool for interaction.

e.g. After blowing the bubbles, you may get the child’s attention by popping the bubble ‘ pop, goes the bubble’ - you may either sing it out or say it out aloud with very different intonation. 

You may continue by saying ‘big bubble is going to pop’, and show the action of the bubble being popped so the child may be able to imitate the action as well. 

2. Playing with a ball - This activity is like playing throw and catch but at a closer proximity at the beginning of time especially if the child has no experience in playing with a ball. This activity would be better when it is done on the floor with the child seated facing you. 

e.g. You may instruct the child to catch the ball by using a loud voice to get their attention, slide the ball down to the child and observe what the child does, they may pick the ball up to see what it is at the first time round. You may describe the ball as ‘wow, the ball is big! It is round and it is blue in colour!’ This would allow the child to comprehend what is the object he/she is holding. After a few trials, the child would be able to throw the ball to you and catch it, this would indirectly be working on gross motor skills. 

So, as you see teaching a child to play and communicate isn’t a difficult task. All that is needed to be is to be creative with the activities or toys that your child have around the house.