Joint attention in Down syndrome: A meta-analysis.

Only 11 studies were available, and some comparisons had very few studies; the Down syndrome versus other developmental disabilities result rested on three studies, with one study likely influential. Children with Down syndrome were compared with typically developing children matched on mental age or vocabulary, not chronological age, so the results do not show joint attention is age-appropriate for their actual age. The included studies did not report whether children with Down syndrome also had autism, so co-occurring autism could have affected joint attention performance. Studies used different joint attention measures, coding schemes, contexts, and social partners, and the review could not separate these factors. The review was cross-sectional, so it cannot show when joint attention emerges or whether joint attention causes later language and social gains.

Do not read this as evidence that children with Down syndrome have better joint attention than same-age typically developing children. The comparison was with typically developing children matched on mental age or vocabulary, and the advantage over other developmental disabilities came from a small number of studies.