Playtime

Play is considered a fundamental activity of childhood. In addition to being fun, play is thought to be crucial to developing important cognitive and social skills. This leads us to an important question. Do children with autism play and if so is their play different from other children?

Researchers in the UK studied the play of children with and without autism (ages 7 to 14 years). Note two things about this study. First, these are not very young children. Second, the researchers matched children by their language abilities. This means that the children with autism had language abilities that were similar to children their own (chronological) age - making them different from many children with autism who have delayed language skills. They matched the two groups to see if something other than language delays contributed to play skills. It is important to know this when you try to make generalizations about the play of all children with autism.

They found that both groups could play - meaning they could use toys to represent things and stories. For example, both groups could pretend that dolls were people and could make up stories for them. However, the children with autism showed less creativity in their play and, unfortunately appeared to have less "fun" when they played. They had the cognitive ability to represent toys as other objects, but seemed to enjoy this play less than children without autism.

Could this lack of enjoyment be related to their social deficits? In other words, although they could understand what was expected of them, was the lack of social interest interfering with what makes play fun?

Reference

Hobson, R., Lee, A., & Hobson, J. (2009). Qualities of symbolic play among children with autism: A social-developmental perspective. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 39(1), 12-22.