Play Development in Children with Autism

1. Play Development in Children with Autism By: Viviana Sanchez

2. Question Does the stage level of play development in children with autism differ from regular developing children?

3. Background - Autism Also called Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) Current estimates suggest that autism rates are higher than 1 in 150 A lifelong developmental disorder that is neurologically based. No known cause, cure, or accepted intervention approach (Stansberry-Brusnahan & Collet-Klingenberg 2010)

4. Characteristics of Children with Autism • Severe qualitative impairment in social interaction, verbal and nonverbal communication skills • Limited range of activities and interests • Problems with sensory perception (Attwood 2008) • Deficits in imitation, gesturing, observational learning, joint attention, symbolic play, and understanding the expression of emotion (Mastrangelo 2009).

5. Where Children with Autism Excel Tests involving visual-spatial ability and memorization skills. Numerous also acquire extraordinary reading skills with little or no instruction. A number of children with autism also have a genius in certain subjects; for example in the arts or mathematics (Wolfberg 1999). Those children are referred to as autistic savants.

6. Focus of Intervention Programs The National Research Council and the National Professional Development center have both recommended the areas they believe should be focused on when designing intervention programs for children with autism. Their lists are almost identical. Both focus on communication skills, social skills, cognitive development and academics, behavior, and play skills (Stansberry-Brusnahan & Collet-Klingenberg 2010).

7. Background - Play • Social skills • ability to understand people’s emotions and perspectives and making and maintaining friendships (Wolfberg, McCracken, & Tuchel, 2008). • Cognitive skills • Motor skills • How to use their imaginations (Naber, Bakermans-Kranenburg, Ijzendoorn, & Swinkels 2007). • Vygotskyattributed play to have a vital role in development. He believed that the significance of play was beyond representing stages of development to actually leading development (Wolfberg 1999).

8. Defining Play (Mastrangelo 2009) • There is no accepted definition of play • It is a large idea that influences human experiences throughout life • Changes overtime • Culture and ideology also attribute to variations in definitions. • Characteristics • Pleasurable • requires active engagement • voluntary and intrinsically motivated • attention is required until the end of the activity • it is flexible and changing • must have a non literal orientation.

9. Children with Autism and Play Children with autism usually show inflexibility, concreteness, impulsivity, irrationality, and unreliability in play. There are a number of high functioning adults with autism that report having felt frustrated during their childhood years at not having played and formed friendships with other children. Without normal childhood experiences of pretend play, people with autism can become locked in a solitary world of literal meanings

10. Types of Play

11. Manipulative Play • Starts first few months of life • Handle toys in oral and calculating ways by feeling, licking, sniffing, turning , throwing, etc. • Learn about different objects, relations, and ways to interact with and influence their environment (Naber, et al, 2007). Promotes both motor and sensory experiences, and an understanding of cause and effect. • Children with autism generally participate in object play, although they do so less than regular children. Children with ASD only see the details of the toy, not the big picture. (Mastrangelo 2009).

12. Functional Play • Begins between 14 and 18 months. • Use objects appropriately • For example they may use a spoon to feed a doll, and place a teacup on a saucer. • Child assigns the object, even if it is in a smaller toy form, the function that it has in daily life (Naber, et al, 2007) • Learn to name objects and make associations, both of which are needed in symbolic play • Children with autism struggle in functional play because it is learned from imitating and relating to other people and theydo not usually engage other people or use them to guide themselves in dealing with an object (Mastrangelo 2009)

13. Symbolic Play • Starts between ages 2 and 3 • During this type of play children disengage from reality and make-up fantasies. • There are three types of symbolic play. • object substitution, ex. pretending a banana is a telephone • acknowledgment of properties that are not there or that are untrue, ex. pretending a dry table is wet • imagining objects that are not there as present, ex. an empty cup has tea in it (Wolfberg 1999). • During symbolic play children use language to make and change objects uses, make inferences and predictions of future events, understand the difference between reality and fantasy, and express feelings and ideas.

14. Why Children with Autism Struggle with Symbolic Play • There are many different theories on why children with autism rarely pick up symbolic play. • Including a lack of ability to identify the feelings of others, limited ability to create their own ideas, lack of ability to disengage from the real world, and a lack of motivation for symbolic play (Hobson P., Lee, & Hobson J. 2008).

15. Why Children With Autism Struggle With Symbolic Play Symbolic play is highly linked with language and social awareness; two things that children with ASD lack in. As play becomes more complex it usually contains themes imitating familiar social interactions. For this reason understanding of the social world becomes vital in being able to create and maintain intricate play scenarios. There is a positive correlation between symbolic play and language in early stages of language acquisition in children. The amount of symbolic play seen in children with ASD can be used to draw attention to language potential (Mastrangelo 2009).

16. Peer Play Children with autism tend lack social skills. They have difficulty establishing and sustaining relationships with peers. Socially, children with ASD generally have less closeness to peers, fewer initiations, less responses to social overtures, and more solitary activities than children with other developmental disabilities (Mastrangelo 2009). Evidence shows that children with ASD desire to interact with peers but lack the social skills necessary to establish and maintain a mutual focus in play. They cannot clearly communicate interest in play and for a child with autism understanding social cues and social nuances is difficult (Wolfberg 1999).

17. Methodology This study was conducted on kindergarten age children. A class of regularly developing children and a class of children with autism were each observed once during their designated recess time for a period of 20 minutes. The regular education class had 11 students and the autistic class had 8 children. Both classes were from elementary schools in suburban areas in New York. To be able to do the observation, letters were sent out to the principals of both the elementary schools used. I waited to get permission from the principals before I did the observation.

18. What Was Being Observed? • Whether the child was playing alone or with one or more peers • Type of play and how long it was being performed

19. Observation Tool

20. Results Observations proved hypothesis to be correct. The children with autism were not at the same stage of play development as the normally developing children. Not only were the children with autism at a lower stage of play development, they hardly performed any play at all. They did not show any symbolic play.

22. Interesting Observations In the group of children with autism the teacher and teacher aides were a big part of the play that was being performed. They encouraged children to go on the slides and swings, and to play with their peers. In the group of regular children the teacher aides were not involved in the play being performed. The group of normally developing children were involved in a complex play scenario. It was seemed that a majority of the children in the class were playing a long term play scenario. It was a type of chasing game and the children were different fantasy type creatures; including witches and aliens. A similarity from both groups was the children who were on the swings tended to stay on the swing for a majority of the playtime.

23. Discussion • Results of this study show that children with ASD struggle tremendously with play. Not only are they far behind their peers in the stage level of play they perform; they show little play overall. This lack of play hurts children with ASD in a variety of ways. • Development of social skills and friendships • Cognitive development • Language • Creativity and imagination • This can lead to children with autism to grow up and be solitary individuals and only be able to understand literal meanings.

24. Significance of Study There is a need to help children with autism develop play skills. There is a lot of evidence from this study and previous studies on the lack of symbolic play and a deficit in play development in children with ASD. To help children with autism reach their full potential they must be taught play skills and need motivation to use their creativity and imagination so they can develop symbolic play. One thing that is currently being done with children with autism is play therapy. It helps teach play skills that they can use outside of the therapy.

25. Limitations Groups were only observed once Only two groups were observed Children were observed on a playground were they did not have any props other than the playground itself

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