The Use of Theatre to Develop Social and Communication Behaviors for Students with Autism

Abstract

Social and communication behaviors are often a focus of instruction for individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). A theatre rehearsal and production process is challenging and joyful work that nurtures the development of social and language skills. This study evaluated and described social and language behaviors for students with ASD both before and after a 10-week theatre experience. The results indicated that, when compared with a control group, the students with theatre experiences had significant and positive changes in the development of social and language skills. Most particularly, these students had significant improvement in Social Responsiveness, acknowledgement of the Perspective of Others, and Participation and Cooperation. The theatre experiences led to positive changes in social and communication behaviors for students with ASD.

Teachers’ Perceptions: Role-play Strategies for Teaching Social Skills to Children with Autism in Physical Education

“…This strengthens give them the opportunity to concentrate and at the same time, to communicate in extracurricular environments Children with ASD when participated in a group, usually they try to be obedient, but more often teachers observe that they are uncomfortable because the characteristics of ASD, in any case, improve their social interaction (Barak & Feng, 2016). Reading et al (2016) in their research studied the role of cooperative and role-playing activities in social interaction of children with ASD within school groups and the relationship between these activities and interpersonal relations in communication. The result of this study seems to enhance social interaction because each child with ASD has the ability to differentiate and modify his behavior.…”

Peers, play, and performance to build social salience in autistic youth: A multisite randomized clinical trial.

“…Thus, interacting with socially competent peer actors using theater techniques has the potential to target many aspects of social competence, including social cognition, social interaction, and social communication . Intervention studies employing various theatrical approaches (e.g., role-playing, improvisation, thematic play) have reported changes in communication, perspective taking, and adaptive functioning (Beadle-Brown et al, 2018;Corbett et al, 2011); unfortunately, the majority of studies lacked scientific rigor (e.g., small samples sizes, pretest posttest design, primarily parent reports; Beadle-Brown et al, 2018;Corbett et al, 2011) with only a few studies including a control group (Reading et al, 2016), and more rigorous RCT designs (Corbett et al, 2016(Corbett et al, , 2019Ioannou et al, 2020). SENSE Theatre incorporates peers, play, and performance to enhance social competence.…”