Symbolic Play Skills and Parental Object Labelling During Free Play: Preliminary Findings with Preschoolers with ASD and Typical Development

Background:

Child and parent variables that may affect language acquisition in both typically-developing (TD) children and children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are observable during parent-child play interactions. Symbolic play skills are associated with expressive and receptive language abilities in TD preschoolers (Lewis et al., 2000), and children with ASD are known to have deficits in symbolic play (e.g., Baron-Cohen, 1987). The link between play skills and language development in children with ASD, however, may be mediated by parental behaviours (Lewis, 2003). In a sample of children with ASD, Siller and Sigman (2008) found that better language outcomes over time were associated with a greater proportion of parental utterances that were contingent upon their child’s focus of attention during play. Further exploration of the links between child play skills, parent-child interaction variables, and language acquisition will inform future intervention strategies for children with ASD.

Objectives:

To evaluate how language acquisition in TD preschoolers and children with ASD is affected by child symbolic play skills and parental follow-in object labelling.

Methods:  

TD preschoolers and children with ASD, along with one of their parents, were enrolled in a 1-year study carried out over 3 visits. The full sample in this study will include 15 Anglophone and 15 Francophone parent-child dyads within each of the TD and ASD groups (total sample size of 60). The present analysis includes 5 Anglophone dyads from each group matched on the children’s expressive language scores from the Mullen Scales of Early Learning (MSEL; Mullen, 1995). At the first visit, the mean chronological ages were 26 months (TD group) and 57 months (ASD group). Participants were administered the MSEL and the MacArthur-Bates Communication Development Inventory (CDI-2; Fenson et al., 2004) at the first visit. During the second visit, 6 months later, the parent-child dyads were recorded during a 10-minute free play session. Video of the interaction was coded for the proportion of child play acts that involved symbolic use of objects and for the proportion of parental object labels that followed the child’s focus of attention. The MSEL and CDI-2 were administered again during the third visit, 6 months after the second visit.  

Results:  

Preliminary data appear to reflect emerging group differences. The proportion of child play acts that included symbolic object manipulation is lower for the ASD group (M=.30, SD=.17) than the TD group (M=.55, SD=.38). The ASD group was also lower on the proportion of parent object labels that followed the child’s focus of attention (M=.53, SD=.12) than the TD group (M=.76, SD=.15).

Conclusions:  

The data thus far are consistent with previous reports (Baron-Cohen, 1987) that children with ASD use fewer symbolic play acts. The greater proportion of parental labels that followed the child’s focus of attention in the TD group may reflect more attempts by the parents of the children with ASD to re-direct their children’s attention. The child and parent variables reported in this analysis will be used to predict differences in expressive language and vocabulary growth over the 1-year span of the study.