Promoting play skills in low-functioning children with autism using video modelling

Abstract

Autism is one of the most widely recognised developmental disorders, affecting a variety of cognitive and physical areas to differing extents. The area of play skills has been found to be a particularly detrimental deficit in children with autism due to its links to other later areas of development such as mastery of language and ability to interact with peers (Lewis, Boucher, Lupton et al., 2000). Specifically functional and symbolic play behaviours have been the focus of a large amount of play-related autism interventions of late (Williams, Reddy & Costall, 2001; Lewis, Boucher, Lupton et al. 2000). In the present study we utilise the video modelling technique to teach lowfunctioning children with autism both functional and symbolic play behaviours. The results of two case studies revealed that the method is highly effective in this population. The generalisation of the acquired skills across stimuli, however, did not have great success, although maintenance of the acquired skills across one month was successful in this group. The present study does strongly support the use of video modelling to effectively teach new play skills to children with autism. It also, however, highlights areas in need of further focused research before the technique can become a standardised and publicly accessible tool. Autism