engleski

Intensity, focus and scope of child`s interests: should we pay more attention?

systematically understudied for many years and their influence on the developmental profile and progress of each child was generally not enough considered and used in clinical settings. Moreover, some professionals used to believe that intervention strategies should focus on things a child „should have interest for“, and not take into account objects and actions that spontaneously draw child`s attention, especially if the focus or intensity of those interests was considered „abnormal“. Although diagnostic manuals highlight the importance of assessing child`s interests in differential diagnostics, there are no standardized measures that could help professionals in determining whether child`s interests are „highly restricted“ or „abnormal“. A few newer studies indicate that child`s interests could be valuable diagnostic indicator that differentiates between various clinical groups, if standardized measures are used. Furthermore, more and more intervention approaches began to incorporate child`s existing interests in their program, since some studies suggested that interest-based interventions help increase and accelerate learning process (e.g. elicit joint attention behaviors, learn new words, improve reading comprehension etc.) and help reduce anxiety and repetitive behaviors. Therefore, available data highlight the importance and usefulness of the analysis of child`s intrinsic interests in clinical settings for both diagnostic and intervention purposes.

interests, children, assessment, intervention, autism, communication

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