Joint attention

[Birdyfly]

Can a toddler be autistic whilst having really good joint attention?

It depends on the specifics, as joint attention is a very broad term, for example, if we take the three point gaze or eye contact, then yes, many autistic toddlers have excellent eye contact and demonstrate strong three point gazes. Other forms of joint attention like pointing to share interests (like a plane in the sky) are very rare to see in autistic toddlers by 18M old.

Thanks for your reply, that's interesting!
How does a language delay affect this? I'm just wondering that being delayed may make a child point late too so that could affect their joint attention?

In the early years language (words) represents such a small part of a child's 'communicative toolbox' that it has next to no bearing on their development. On average, a speech delayed child (with no other underlying issues) will have no problem communicating effectively with their carers (to meet their needs and share interests) if they have no words by 2YRs old - their frustration might increase as they develop more complex thoughts but they would also greatly increase their use of gestures to compensate for their lack of words, so more pointing, more hand movements, more communicative eye contact, etc, generally an increase in the use of gestures versus a non speech delayed child at the same age. Once the words and sentences come their use of gestures would decrease as you would expected. This behavior applies to older children and adults too, if one day we couldn't talk we would use our hands more to communicate, if the next day we could talk then we would use them less. Also note that gestures come before words (lack of gesturing affects word development and not the other way around), i.e.there is widely accepted link between gestures and words (with gestures being the building blocks for words), for example, in many cases, once a child starts pointing to share interests words tend to soon follow at a very increased rate.

That makes sense! It's strange because my daughter was late to point and use gestures but once she did point etc, she then began using words too. So overall it looks like a delay but I don't know!

Yes, it probably is just a speech delay as they are very common in young children. Children with autism also learn and meet milestones but in a atypical way: examples could include pointing after 2.5Y of age, expressive language coming before receptive language, etc.