Patterns of Play Activities in Autism and Typical Development. A Case Study

摘要

Objects propose us a variety of action possibilities (affordances). The individual's experiences, motivation and object properties also influence the way of object use. Conventional (proper) and nonconventional (flexible, idiosyncretic) object use is very much part of normal development. However, little detailed attention has been paid so far to object use in typical and atypical development. The aim of my study was to explore the differences of object play between two preschool children. One of them lives with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), while the other boy is a mentally age-matched child with typical development (TD). Object play was recorded in semi-structured situations by child-parent dyads, in their homes. Three sets of objects were introduced and offered for play by the parent. For the analysis of the video records I used the Observer XT 8.0 software. Two independent coders coded actions types. The TD-child generally preferred creative play with the objects offered by the mother. The mother's demonstration and her short instructions were enough to facilitate her son's play activity. In contrast, the autistic boy's attention was narrow and this child needed more explicit information about the tools to interpret their context. It is remarkable that the ASD-child expressed a desire to use pictures during the play activity. The TD-child's spontaneous play reflected more practical and flexible knowledge about the surrounding world (existence of dynamic mental representations), while the autistic child rather requested single pictures (simpler and static information for cognition) by sets. Further researches are needed to investigate how to use pictures exactly to stimulate play movements to develop autistic children's skills and support their socialization and integration into the society.