A COMPARISON OF THE EFFECTS OF FACILITATED AND STRUCTURED PLAY ON THE SOCIAL BEHAVIORS OF NON-VERBAL AND HIGHER FUNCTIONING PRE-SCHOOLERS WITH AUTISM

Abstract

The play and communicative behaviors of children with autism have been said lo lack spontaneity. Behavioral as well as cognitive interventions have shown that appropriate spontaneous behaviors can be learnt. Recent interventions have focused on providing play experiences for children with autism in play groups of socially competent peers to enhance these behaviors. These interventions show that autistic children can make ou tslanding gains in cognitive and social play (Wolfberg & Schuler, 1993). Play groups were implemented in two child care centres/kindergartens in Singapore. Eight autistic pre-schoolers and eighteen peers participated in the study which lasted approximately ten weeks. The latter were divided into four groups. Each group interacted with two children, a non-verbal child with mental age less than two years and another verbal child with age-appropriate intelligence. Prior to the play sessions, the peers were taught to interact and initiate play with the target children in groups. Training of the peers was continued when the experimental conditions were implemented. Interactions amongst the peers and the target children were enhanced by using structured and facilitated play approaches whose features were extrapolated from teaching methods in enhancing play and communication. Under structured teaching conditions, the peers were taught to practice specific skills with the target children using massed practice of discrete trials. The experimenter instructed the peers on how to implement the initiatives. Under this condition, the target children were not given a choice in the selection of activities/toys. Incidental teaching techniques were used in facilitated play. In the latter, prompts were provided to encourage the peers to exercise their initiative to implement the activities. These interventions were implemented after baseline sessions. Experimental conditions were counterbalanced to eliminate sequence effects. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse the effects of the independent variables on the social behaviors of children with autism in play groups. Specifically, the study investigated the effect of the play paradigms and mental age on different categories of play and communicative behaviors (spontaneous appropriate, spontaneous inappropriate, respondent appropriate and respondent inappropriate behaviors) and to understand the attitudes and the perceptions of peers and parents towards the implementation of the play groups in Singapore. Group trends as well as individual differences were reflected in the data. The study showed that under structured play conditions, the percentage of spontaneous appropriate behaviors was higher for the non-verbal group than the verbal group. Under facilitated play conditions, the verbal group had a higher percentage of spontaneous appropriate behaviors than the non-verbal group. When the experimental conditions were implemented, the two groups of subjects communicated and played more appropriately. The effect of mental age and teaching paradigm impacted differently on communication and play. Gains in communication were more evident than those in play. Qualitative changes in play and communication were also noted for the participants. Qualitative reports from parents also validated clinical gains. The positive responses from the peers also favor the implementation of play groups in Singapore. However, certain issues merit consideration before the successful implementation of these groups. These are parental preference for academics over the learning of social skills, the emphasis of academics in the kindergarten curriculum and group dynamics.