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caught between them

the bar is elegant at first glance. low amber lighting reflecting off polished marble counters, crystal glasses lined neatly behind the bartender, quiet jazz threading through the room. everyone here is dressed well. tailored suits, sleek dresses, expensive perfume drifting through the air.

you fit the room perfectly tonight.

your dress is just as polished as the place itself, the kind that belongs somewhere with dim lighting and expensive drinks.

but as the hour grows later, the atmosphere shifts. the music grows heavier, bass slipping into the speakers as more people crowd the floor. what started as a refined bar slowly turns into something closer to a nightclub.

that’s when you notice them.

two men at the end of the bar, still dressed like they came straight from a meeting. dark tailored suits, loosened ties, untouched composure even as the room grows louder around them.

the blond one adjusts the knot of his tie calmly.

the other leans back slightly on his stool, sleeves rolled just enough, watching the room with thoughtful eyes.

then both of them look at you. at the same time.

nanami notices you staring first, though his expression barely changes. he sets his glass down carefully and gestures toward the empty seat between them, the invitation subtle but unmistakable.

“someone has been watching us,” he says evenly. “was i that obvious?” you murmur, a small smile tugging at your lips. higuruma turns his head then, his dark gaze drifting over your face with quiet curiosity. there is something analytical about the way he studies you, like he is gathering evidence.

then the corner of his mouth lifts slightly. “or perhaps,” he murmurs, voice low enough that you have to lean closer to hear over the growing music, “we were watching her first.”

“both of you?” you ask softly. neither of them looks away.

you sit between them before you fully realize you have decided to.

the seat feels like it was meant for you.

the bartender places a drink in front of you without question, and conversation flows easier than it should. the music grows louder as the night deepens, bass humming through the polished floors as more people fill the space.

at some point nanami’s arm settles along the back of your chair. broad and steady, close enough that you can feel the warmth of him without quite touching.

at some point higuruma leans in closer so you can hear him over the music, his voice low near your ear while the scent of whiskey and cologne lingers between you.

“so,” higuruma says eventually, slowly swirling the melting ice in his glass. his eyes flick toward you again, thoughtful.

“which one of us caught your attention first?”

nanami exhales softly beside you, something faintly amused in the sound. he adjusts his cuff with practiced precision before glancing toward his friend.

“that’s an unfair question,” he replies calmly. “she has not decided yet.” you glance between them, heat creeping up your neck. “maybe i’m still deciding,” you admit.

the look they exchange feels practiced. familiar. something quiet passes between them without needing words. higuruma tilts his head slightly as his gaze returns to you. “have you?”

the interruption comes when someone bumps the counter, jostling your drink hard enough that it spills across the polished bar and onto your dress.

nanami’s hand catches the glass instantly, steady and controlled before it can tip completely. higuruma reaches for a napkin at the same moment, sliding it toward you.

“you should clean that sweetheart,” nanami says calmly. “great,” you mutter softly, glancing down at the stain. “perfect timing.“

his hand lingers near yours just a moment longer than necessary. “the bathrooms are quieter,” he suggests. you hesitate for only a second before nodding. “lead the way.” you don’t even notice how naturally they position themselves around you until you’re already walking through the crowd together.

he hallway is dim compared to the glowing bar, shadows playing over the walls like a secret invitation. the bathroom door closes behind you and the music becomes distant. the sudden quiet makes the space feel smaller, more intimate.

nanami loosens his tie another inch, the motion drawing your eyes to the exposed skin at his throat. higuruma leans back lightly against the door, arms loosely crossed as his gaze moves between the two of you. “you never answered the question, love,” higuruma says after a moment, his voice low and teasing, roughened by desire.

nanami steps closer at the same time, his presence warm and commanding, the scent of his cologne wrapping around you.

“she doesn’t want to choose,” he says calmly, his eyes darkening as they trace your lips, then lower, to the curve of your neck. “maybe i don’t,” you whisper, breath a little uneven.

nanami’s hand settles at your waist before you fully register how close he is now. higuruma reaches out next, fingers brushing beneath your chin as he tilts your face slightly toward him, thumb grazing the edge of your jaw.

nanami leans in first. the kiss is slow and controlled, his hand tightening slightly at your waist as he draws your body flush against his, lips parting yours with deliberate pressure, tongue sliding in to taste you deeply. when he pulls back, his breath hot against your mouth, higuruma is already there.

you let out a soft breath against his lips, “so this is how tonight is going?” his mouth replacing nanami’s with an easy confidence that feels less like competition and more like continuation, his tongue teasing the seam of your lips before delving in, sucking gently on your lower lip.

he second kiss lingers longer, deeper, hungrier. higuruma’s hand slides from your chin to rest lightly at the side of your neck, his thumb brushing against your pulse point as it quickens under his touch.

when you pull back for air, nanami’s thumb traces a slow circle at your hip. “you two planned this,” you murmur faintly, breath still uneven. higuruma exhales quietly, his free hand settling on your lower back to pull you closer, grinding his hips subtly against yours.

“well,” he murmurs, glancing toward nanami with a shared look of understanding, heat in his eyes.

nanami’s arm slips easily around higuruma’s shoulders, their closeness effortless in a way that suggests this is not unfamiliar territory. “you were right,” nanami says calmly, his lips brushing your ear as he speaks, voice a low rumble that vibrates through you.

higuruma’s fingers rest lightly beneath your jaw, tilting your head to expose your neck as his lips descend, teeth grazing the sensitive skin before sucking hard enough to leave a blooming mark, a hickey that pulses with heat.

their eyes meet over your shoulder, a silent agreement passing between them. then nanami speaks first, voice low and certain, his free hand joining higuruma’s at your neck, thumb pressing into the fresh mark.

higuruma’s mouth curves slightly as his gaze drops back to you, his body pressing forward to grind against your thigh, the friction sending sparks through you.

“fortunately,” he says quietly, breath hot against your skin, “we have never been very good at making people choose.” and suddenly it makes perfect sense why they approached you together, their shared touches igniting something wild and unrestrained.

nanami’s mouth finds the other side of your neck now, lips parting to suck a matching hickey into your skin, his teeth nipping sharply before soothing with his tongue, hand resting at your hip.

you gasp into the space between them, fingers clutching at nanami’s shirt while higuruma’s free hand slips to nanami’s hair, tugging softly, earning a groan.

“you two are dangerous,” you breathe. nanami tugs on higuruma’s tie, bringing their lips together, the kiss is messy and full of want. you stare at the intensity, letting out a soft groan as nanami’s hand tightens around your hip.

“that’s it,” nanami murmurs against higuruma’s lips, his own hips bucking forward, the heat of him unmistakable. they move in sync, bodies surrounding you, their touches overlapping in a haze of possession and pleasure.

the bathroom’s quiet wraps around you like a cocoon, the distant thrum of the nightclub fading further. nanami straightens your dress strap with a gentle touch, his gaze warm and intent as it meets higuruma's over your head, a nod passing between them like an old agreement renewed.

"let's get out of here," nanami says softly, his voice a low rumble that vibrates through your skin, fingers intertwining with yours in a firm, possessive hold. you glance between them once more before smiling faintly. “i was hoping you’d say that.”

higuruma nods, his hand settling at the small of your back, guiding you forward with easy confidence, the three of you moving as one toward the exit, bodies brushing in promise of what's to come, the night stretching open before you.

The Power Of Attention Diversity At Work

The only way to cultivate focus is to have an alignment of what does and doesn’t deserve attention. Shared attention is both the cause and result of a cohesive community—and the reason why it’s true that “culture eats strategy for lunch.”

Source: The Power Of Attention Diversity At Work

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#collective sensing organ #shared attention

From SFARI:

To better understand the interaction between autism, intellectual disability and language, researchers in the new study compared the language ability of 36 children with both autism and intellectual disability, 26 children with intellectual disability only and 34 typically developing controls. Children were matched on the basis of mental age, independent of language ability. The mean age for children with autism was about 7 years; those with intellectual disability were about 6.5 years old and controls were about 3 years old.

The researchers used a number of measures to rate expressive language, or speaking ability, and receptive language, the ability to understand the speech of others, in each of the children. These measures included both direct tests and parental-report questionnaires.

Overall, children with autism and intellectual disability have lower scores in receptive language than do those with intellectual disability alone, who themselves score lower than controls. There is no statistically significant difference in expressive language between children with autism and intellectual disability compared with children with intellectual disability alone; but, again, both groups score lower than controls.

This suggests that, overall, children with autism have stronger expressive than receptive language skills, whereas this trend is reversed in the other two groups. Specifically, about 34 percent of children with autism and intellectual disability have better expressive compared with receptive language, the study found. By contrast, 54 percent of children with intellectual disability only and 44 percent of controls have better receptive than expressive language.

The researchers also looked at whether the children’s ability to engage the attention of others, called joint attention, and their understanding of symbols was related to their language ability. These two factors account for 81 percent of the variation in receptive language scores and 72 percent of the variation in expressive language scores among the children with autism, the study found. For example, children with autism who have more difficulty with joint attention have lower language scores than those with better joint attention ability.

Fascinating; this highlights the important role of shared or joint attention in the acquisition and functional use of language, both expressive and receptive and supports our assertion that it should be the foundation for assessment and intervention.

Read the rest here.

#autism #language #shared attention

Joint Effort

From the SFARI Blogs, evidence that suggests joint or shared attention is a skill that can be developed when supportive and responsive adults use affect and pacing to explore a child's natural interests:

The researchers tested whether preschool teachers who have no formal training in autism could apply a targeted joint attention intervention, developed in 2006, to improve social skills in children with the disorder.

Counselors from child and adolescent mental health clinics trained more than 30 teachers in the regular preschool program in a six-hour session. The intervention includes 5 minutes of ‘tabletop’ play, in which the teacher actively models a joint attention behavior such as pointing, followed by 15 minutes of floor play, when the child is encouraged to repeat the skills he or she has learned.

For example, the teacher first holds a bag of toys out to the child. If the child pulls out a car, the teacher responds enthusiastically, prompting the child to initiate the desired behavior by asking, “What do you have?” and otherwise expressing interest. If the child shows the teacher the toy in response, the teacher responds positively.

The study found that 30 children who participated in the eight-week, twice-daily intervention were five times more likely to spontaneously engage a teacher’s attention compared with 30 controls. This is an important finding, the researchers say, because similar programs have not had much success in getting children to initiate engagement with caregivers or counselors.

The children in the intervention group also spent slightly longer periods engaged with their mothers after the training sessions, the researchers report. This may be a sign of the children becoming more socially engaged, the researchers say.

Read it here.

#autism #shared attention

From Science Daily:

This comes as no surprise, but highlights the importance of early social referencing and monitoring to develop emerging perspective taking and theory of mind.

"Understanding other people is a key factor in successful communication, and humans start to understand this at a very young age," said Yuyan Luo, associate professor of developmental psychology in the MU College of Arts and Science. "Our study indicates that infants, even before they can verbally communicate, can understand the thought processes of other people -- even if the thoughts diverge from what the infants know as truth, a term psychologists call false belief."

During the study, infants were monitored during different trials of a common psychological test in which an actor indicated preference for certain objects. Researchers timed the infant's gaze, which is an indication of infant knowledge. The infants watched longer when the actor's preferences changed. This led the researchers to believe that infants understood how the actor interacted with the objects.

"When the actor did not witness the removal or addition of the preferred object, the infants seemed to use that information to interpret the person's actions," Luo said. "The infants appear to recognize that the actor's behavior comes from what the actor could see or could not see and hence what the actor thinks, and this finding is consistent with similar false belief studies that involve older children."

Read it here.

If you're interested in additional infant research, I highly recommend Alison Gopnik's latest, The Philosophical Baby.

#shared attention #infant research #theory of mind

An interesting perspective from The Atlantic, describing roads paved with good parental intentions.

“Happiness as a byproduct of living your life is a great thing,” Barry Schwartz, a professor of social theory at Swarthmore College, told me. “But happiness as a goal is a recipe for disaster.” It’s precisely this goal, though, that many modern parents focus on obsessively—only to see it backfire. Observing this phenomenon, my colleagues and I began to wonder: Could it be that by protecting our kids from unhappiness as children, we’re depriving them of happiness as adults?

Paul Bohn, a psychiatrist at UCLA who came to speak at my clinic, says the answer may be yes. Based on what he sees in his practice, Bohn believes many parents will do anything to avoid having their kids experience even mild discomfort, anxiety, or disappointment—“anything less than pleasant,” as he puts it—with the result that when, as adults, they experience the normal frustrations of life, they think something must be terribly wrong.

Consider a toddler who’s running in the park and trips on a rock, Bohn says. Some parents swoop in immediately, pick up the toddler, and comfort her in that moment of shock, before she even starts crying. But, Bohn explains, this actually prevents her from feeling secure—not just on the playground, but in life. If you don’t let her experience that momentary confusion, give her the space to figure out what just happened (Oh, I tripped), and then briefly let her grapple with the frustration of having fallen and perhaps even try to pick herself up, she has no idea what discomfort feels like, and will have no framework for how to recover when she feels discomfort later in life. These toddlers become the college kids who text their parents with an SOS if the slightest thing goes wrong, instead of attempting to figure out how to deal with it themselves. If, on the other hand, the child trips on the rock, and the parents let her try to reorient for a second beforegoing over to comfort her, the child learns: That was scary for a second, but I’m okay now. If something unpleasant happens, I can get through it. In many cases, Bohn says, the child recovers fine on her own—but parents never learn this, because they’re too busy protecting their kid when she doesn’t need protection.

Which made me think, of course, of my own sprints across the sand the second my toddler would fall. And of the time when he was 4 and a friend of mine died of cancer and I considered … not telling him! After all, he didn’t even know she’d been sick (once, commenting on her head scarves, he’d asked me if she was an Orthodox Jew, and like a wuss, I said no, she just really likes scarves). I knew he might notice that we didn’t see her anymore, but all of the parenting listservs I consulted said that hearing about a parent’s death would be too scary for a child, and that, without lying (because God forbid that we enlightened, attuned parents ever lie to our children), I should sugarcoat it in all these ways that I knew would never withstand my preschooler’s onslaught of cross-examining

whys.

In the end, I told my son the truth. He asked a lot of questions, but he did not faint from the shock. If anything, according to Bohn, my trusting him to handle the news probably made him more trusting of me, and ultimately more emotionally secure. By telling him, I was communicating that I believed he could tolerate sadness and anxiety, and that I was here to help him through it. Not telling him would have sent a very different message: that I didn’t feel he could handle discomfort. And that’s a message many of us send our kids in subtle ways every day.

This seems really relevant in two ways. First, it illustrates a concept that can be very difficult for parents of children who already experience more than their fair share of anxiety, fear, frustration, and other so-called negative emotions: our goal is not to ensure that children always feel happy, rather, our goal is to help children to feel safe, confident, and loved across the full range of human emotions.

It's true that one of our first steps in supporting children with processing and praxis challenges is to join them in their ideas, sharing the burden of problem solving and scaffolding their success. These children need the deck to be stacked the deck and the scales to to tipped in their favor in order to bolster their sense of self-efficacy and agency in the world. However, as those underlying capacities grow, so must our support. Often, the best way to do support a child's confidence and self-efficacy is to convey implicit message that "We know you can do this!" by standing by, allowing them to struggle, and being available to celebrate their successes or mourn their shortcomings.

When ego-boosting parents exclaim “Great job!” not just the first time a young child puts on his shoes but every single morning he does this, the child learns to feel that everything he does is special. Likewise, if the kid participates in activities where he gets stickers for “good tries,” he never gets negative feedback on his performance. (All failures are reframed as “good tries.”) According to Twenge, indicators of self-esteem have risen consistently since the 1980s among middle-school, high-school, and college students. But, she says, what starts off as healthy self-esteem can quickly morph into an inflated view of oneself—a self-absorption and sense of entitlement that looks a lot like narcissism. In fact, rates of narcissism among college students have increased right along with self-esteem.

Meanwhile, rates of anxiety and depression have also risen in tandem with self-esteem. Why is this? “Narcissists are happy when they’re younger, because they’re the center of the universe,” Twenge explains. “Their parents act like their servants, shuttling them to any activity they choose and catering to their every desire. Parents are constantly telling their children how special and talented they are. This gives them an inflated view of their specialness compared to other human beings. Instead of feeling good about themselves, they feel better than everyone else.”

Perhaps the key here is to shift from support and feedback that bolsters the child's self-esteem to support and feedback that builds a sense of self-efficacy; the differences in these concepts are subtle, but important. Where former is a measure of one's overall worth and importance ("I'm smart!"), the latter is a measure of one's feeling of competence and ability ("If I work hard, I can figure it out.") The former is fragile, potentially shattered by adversity, but the latter is stable and resilient.

The other concept that the article eludes to is the importance of expanding the child's capacity to share attention, not exclusively around their own experience and ideas, but also with the experiences and ideas of others. Again, the distinction between self-esteem and self-efficacy is relevant: self-esteem is a comparative measure to which another's success may be perceived as a threat. Self-efficacy is far less fragile and is often bolstered by observing and learning from the success and skill of others.

In early adulthood, this becomes a big problem. “People who feel like they’re unusually special end up alienating those around them,” Twenge says. “They don’t know how to work on teams as well or deal with limits. They get into the workplace and expect to be stimulated all the time, because their worlds were so structured with activities. They don’t like being told by a boss that their work might need improvement, and they feel insecure if they don’t get a constant stream of praise. They grew up in a culture where everyone gets a trophy just for participating, which is ludicrous and makes no sense when you apply it to actual sports games or work performance. Who would watch an NBA game with no winners or losers? Should everyone get paid the same amount, or get promoted, when some people have superior performance? They grew up in a bubble, so they get out into the real world and they start to feel lost and helpless. Kids who always have problems solved for them believe that they don’t know how to solve problems. And they’re right—they don’t.”

Read the full article here.

#parenting #shared attention #emotional regulation #praxis

From Science Daily:

Psychologist Daniel Messinger, from the University of Miami (UM), studies infants' interactions and has found that babies are not simply living in the moment. Instead, infants seem to have particular interests that create historical footprints reflected in the infants' visual engagement over time.

(...)

"Previous views of young infants essentially assumed they were primarily affected by what was going on right then," says Messinger, associate professor of psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences at UM and lead author of this study. "The new findings show that the baby is grounded in time and affected by the past, in a surprisingly mature way."

The study indicates that if babies are capable of controlling their behavior with respect to previous behavior, it may represent a building block of intentional action. Babies are influenced by their past actions. This is necessary for them to later develop the ability to obtain mental goals.

This is relevant to our work because it is precisely this capacity that is interrupted in children whose sensory systems are out-of-sync, resulting in a cascade of social delays and other missed milestones. This study demonstrates that babies are able to plan and direct sustained attention based on previous experiences with emotionally salient visual targets, such as mom's face, but it also hints that this pattern of selective attention is the foundation for other kinds of intentional behavior.

I find this exciting because the development of agency and efficacy are concepts of increasing interest for me. This study begins to explain how those rich early moments of intimacy are the foundation, not just for a child's relationship to others, but are also integral to the development of a child's ability to be purposeful.

Read the rest here.

If you have access, the Infancy article is here.

#infant research #autism #sensory processing #agency #shared attention

The New Face of Autism Therapy

From Popular Science:

Computer scientist Maja Mataric heads up a team of engineers who have created humanoid robots programmed to serve as "automated therapists" or "playmates" to engage children with autism.

Bandit uses infrared sensing and cameras to calculate Brian’s position. Seeing that the boy is backing away, the robot tries a different approach. It stops moving and makes a “come-here” gesture, waving him closer. It works. Brian approaches and then stands alongside Bandit, shoulder-to-plastic-shoulder. Bandit stops moving, and Brian backs off. The boy is like a boxer sizing up an opponent. Finally, emboldened, Brian steps up to the robot and leans his face toward it, curious and confident. For the researchers observing the interaction through a two-way mirror in an adjoining room, this small gesture is an encouraging sign. The boy is warming up to the machine, and that’s the point.

Trials are underway at USC, where 15 children with ASD have been observed interacting with Bandit. Their responses have been mixed. Some children have been frightened of the robot, disturbed by the sound of the motor or the rapid approach. Others have been intrigued, talking to the robot or engaging their parents in the shared mutual experience of the robot.

The idea is not simply to create a high-tech toy, nor that these robots would entirely replace human therapists and interactions. Instead, the aim is to provide supplementary therapeutic benefits to maximize time between therapies or for families who live in remote areas and don't have ready access to services.

Automated therapists would not only increase the amount of available therapy but would also make it available wherever a family happened to live. Matari envisions a day when parents will be able to bring Bandit-like ’bots home right after diagnosis for round-the-clock therapy. They could customize them, adjusting the facial expressions and body language depending on the needs or comfort level of the child. Or the robot could adjust itself, gradually becoming less predictable to slowly increase a child’s tolerance for the uncertainty of real social situations. They won’t replace human therapists, but robots could offer an added advantage by giving parents and caregivers a systematic way to track improvements or setbacks in their child’s therapy.

The limitations of Bandit as a dynamic interactive partner are best illustrated by the description of the child whose interest was initially peaked by the robot's expression of excitement- "woo hoo!" The child persevered in several unsuccessful attempts to sustain this interaction, asking the robot to "make a train sound," but ultimately turned to share his disappointment with his mom.

Engineers say that they hope to create a robot who can engage in "simple" games, such as hide-and-seek or "teach" skills, such as eye contact. While Bandit might be programmed to modulate the rate of movement or other "signals" in response to knowledge about the individual profile of the child or even by monitoring the child's movement or physiological changes, Bandit fundamentally lacks the ability to share in the emotional experience of the child or respond dynamically to their ideas.

For this reason, I am very skeptical of the capacity of these machines to be therapeutic beyond providing a novel object around which an interaction might be based. Specifically, I question whether social skills can be generalized from interactions with something that is, by definition, predictable and rule-bound. It seems that engineers are underestimating the depth and complexity of processing in these simple games and the intricate interplay between the individual, activity, and environment. Bandit may be able to hide his face behind his hands in a game of peek-a-boo, but he cannot share the co-regulated emotional experience of anticipating a warm smile of reunion that gives that game meaning.

#shared attention

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