[Assessment of joint attention skill in at-risk infants during follow-up outpatient examination].

: We assessed the joint attention skill of infants by a novel method. One hundred eighty infants who were discharged from the NICU of Teikyo University Hospital and subsequently brought to the outpatient clinic for follow-up examinations between 6 and 12 months of corrected age (297 examinations in total) were entered into the study. Infant were sitting on the mother's knees facing the examiner. After confirming the infant's visual axis to the examiner's eyes, the examiner looked at blocks held in the infant's visual field. When the infant looked at the blocks by perceiving the examiner's gaze, the infant was judged to have joint attention skill. Then, when the infant looked at the examiner again, the attitude was estimated as an action for reconfirmation. Sixty percent of the infants at 6 months of age showed joint attention skill, and more than 90 % of infants showed this skill at 9 months of age. At 6 months of age, boys showed that skill significantly more frequently than girls. This new method is very easy to perform, uses only small blocks and can be completed within a few minutes. Therefore, we considered this new method useful for the assessment of joint attention skill in infants during periodic outpatient health clinic examination.