Eye-contact imitation and symbolic play in children with autism

Giannakidou, Theodora (1994). Eye-contact imitation and symbolic play in children with autism. University of Birmingham. M.Phil.

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Abstract

During the last 20 years studies in autism have focused on both the cognitive and social behavioural parrerns of individuals with autism. These studies have suggested that children with autism seem to have difficulties in the way that interact with other people and they do not engage in spontaneous symbolic play. Present understanding of autism indicates the importance of investigation of the social interaction of children with autism with adults and especially with their caregivers. Additionally symbolic play has been related to a certain extent with children’s ability to imitate but still it is important to examine imitation in children with autism in more depth, to define impairments and delays and to clarify whether or not children with autism are able to play symbolically.

Therefore I took the desicion to address these issues more closely looking at the social interaction between children with autism and their caregivers, children’s imitative ability in certain tasks, and their ability to play symbolically in more depth.

Social interactive components, such as gaze, cooperative play, types of vocalizations and frequency of smiles were observed between children with autism and normally developing preschoolers each with their caregivers in both free-play and structured play sessions. In the structured session children’s ability to imitate three sequential modeled tasks was assessed in relation to children’s verbal comprehension age. The sequential tasks were: A planning task, a functional task and a symbolic play task.

Differences were found in both individual and mutual gaze towards the caregiver. However, both groups showed more gaze towards the caregiver during the symbolic play task. Children with autism spent less time in a cooperative play, and also their mutual and individual smile was less likely to occur during mutual gaze with the caregiver and cooperative play with them.

No differences were found in the behaviour of caregivers from both groups on the frequency and duration of the gaze and in the frequency of initiations during the free play session. However caregivers of children with autism were more likely to use prompts and commands during the free play session, to get child’s attention to the play.

Children in both groups were equal likely to imitate the planning task, but children with autism were less likely to imitate the functional and symbolic play task and also children with autism in their symbolic play ability, showed less generalization than did children in the control group. The present study reveals the positive relationship between imitative ability on a planning, functional and symbolic play tasks with the verbal comprehension age of children with autism.

The results of the present study illustrate what kind of tasks children with autism find difficult to imitate and why they find them difficult. Imitation in children with autism is related to their verbal understanding. In addition the present results suggests that structured environments such as modelling can be important to elicit a better degree of social interaction between children with autism and their caregivers. The results of the present study on the imitation and on the symbolic play support the idea that under structured conditions children with autism are able to carry out more symbolic play acts than in non structured conditions, and also they seem to have performance deficits rather than competence deficits in their symbolic play.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Masters by Research > M.Phil.)

Award Type:

Masters by Research > M.Phil.

Supervisor(s):