Teaching Play Activities to Preschool Children with Disabilities

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine whether three preschool children with autism or autistic-like behaviors would learn and generalize pretend play activities targeted at two different play levels-a developmentally appropriate (DA) level and an age appropriate (AA) level-differently. The children's readiness for the DA play level was assessed with the Developmental Play Assessment (DPA) instrument (Lifter, Edwards, Avery, Anderson, & Sulzer-Azaroff, 1968). We taught individual exemplars from the two different play levels one at a time, to each of the children, in a sequential treatments design. In contrast to the consistently acquired DA activities, the activities of the AA category apparently were more difficult, and in most cases, they were not acquired In addition, the children were less likely to generalize the AA skills to other activities or toys. The results are discussed in terms of (a) the importance of developmental considerations in selecting instructional objectives, and (b) the usefulness of directly teaching play activities to children with developmental disabilities.Play is regarded as the "work" of childhood, and accordingly serves several important functions in development. As children engage in play activities they leam about objects and events, leam language for talking about these objects and events, and develop a range of interactions with parents and peers (Garvey,

Evidence-Based Comprehensive Treatments for Early Autism

“…Good teaching practices and procedures share many common elements between developmentalists and behaviorists. Lifter, Sulzer-Azaroff, Anderson, Coyle, and Cowdery (1993) demonstrated that children made maximum progress in symbolic play learning when behavioral teaching practices followed a developmental sequence for deciding the content of the teaching. It would be helpful for researchers of specific models to discuss separately the content of teaching (the curriculum) and the process of teaching (the teaching procedures and practices used).…”

Picture Me Playing: Increasing Pretend Play Dialogue of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

“…These findings should be considered in conjunction with the growing body of research in support of visual strategies (e.g. Ganz and Flores 2008;Johnson et al 2003) and the intermingling of behavioral and naturalistic approaches to intervention (Bernard-Optiz et al 2004;Lifter et al 1993;Malone 2003;Prizant and Wetherby 1998). Although it is critical to provide specific and direct instruction, even scripted dialogue to children with ASD, it is just as important to provide intervention in the natural environment during meaningful communicative interactions (Goldstein 2002).…”

“…Most recently, Hobson et al (2009) posited that the underpinnings of play are more complex than previously thought, proposing that the development of symbolic play involves the interrelation of multiple factors, including generativity, flexibility, social-emotional motivation, and perspective-taking. Moreover, play is intrinsically motivating to children, and the simple desire to play because it is fun should not be discounted (Hobson et al 2009;Lifter et al 1993).…”

Joint Attention Impairment in Autism: Clinical Picture, Rationale and Functional MRI Findings

“…In symbolic play, the theme of pretence evolves from playing with toys functionally as in constructing a building to playing with toys symbolically as pretending that a banana is a telephone [20]. In comparison with typically developing children at the same mental age, autistic children have significant delay in development of symbolic play [21].…”