Autistic kids at play

Előadó: Marietta Kékes Szabó

Assistant lecturer, psychologist

Előadás absztrakt:

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are a group of typically human developmental disabilities, in which the triad of impairments, as first described by Wing (1979), can be grasped: social communication, -interaction and -imagination. In the past decades more theories have been proposed to explain the possible background of ASD, as well as great variety of therapeutic methods came to light. Linking to the 3rd area of the impairments we focused on children's play activity and aimed to explore its characteristics.
I investigated 15-15 autistic and normal developing children and their mothers to know more about the development of object play. On the one hand, I observed the children in different situations (free play, social initiative taken by the adult, imitation, social rutines and expectation, taking turns, playing with dolls), on the other hand, I used a questionnaire of Beyer and Gammeltoft (2007) to collect information from the parents about their children's general habits linking to play activities.
I found atypical object use in ASD, presence of stereotypical and repetitive action patterns. Children with ASD prefer functional play and had primarily serious difficulties with creative object use, reciprocity and imitation.