Correlation Between Play and Turn-Taking in Young Children with Autism

Background: Early intervention strategies for young children at-risk for autism focus heavily on increasing early social and language skills. Oftentimes, these strategies incorporate object play and social games as ways to elicit child communication and social engagement. Social games involve children and adults using predictable, repetitive turns around a central theme, such as an object. Playing such games may help young children with autism learn to coordinate attention to objects and people, an important aspect of learning to intentionally communicate. Children with autism vary in their object interest and object knowledge. Clinical experience indicates that it is more difficult to get children with low object interest or object knowledge to engage in turn-taking games.

Objectives:

This study seeks to test this clinical impression by testing whether there is a positive association between object interest and object knowledge within turn-taking exchanges with an adult.

Methods:

A concurrent correlational design was used to address whether there is an association between object play and turn-taking in young children with autism. Participants included 36 children, average age 33 months (SD = 8). Thirty-three children received a diagnosis of autism by a licensed clinical psychologist using the ADOS and MSEL. Three children received a diagnosis of PDD-NOS. Three variables were derived: (a) number of types of differentiated play actions, (b) number of toys with which differentiated play occurred, and (c) the sum of the number of action turns and give turns taken by the child. The object play variables were derived from the Developmental Play Assessment (Lifter, 2001). The turn-taking variable was derived from an experimental measure of object turn-taking (adapted from Ousely, 1997; Yoder & Stone, 2006).

Results:

The predictions were confirmed. A strong positive correlation was found between number of turns and the number of toys on which differentiated play occurred, and the number of types of differentiated play actions, R-square = 0.284 and 0.2725 respectively.

Conclusions:

This correlational study is a first step in understanding the association between object play and turn-taking. The concurrent correlational design does not identify directionality of the association, nor does it allow for inferences of causation. Therefore, directionality of the association between object play and turn-taking, as well as examination of a possible functional relation between the variables, should be done through rigorous experimental design where threats to internal validity are controlled, and where alternative explanations may be more readily ruled out. If future studies replicate the association and support a causal influence of play on turn-taking, then interventions targeting the increase of children’s object interest and object knowledge may increase opportunities for social and language development through turn-taking exchanges. These findings are particularly important as researchers work to develop potential interventions for young children with autism that are effective and family-friendly.