Games also offer children the opportunity to engage in shared attention and joint action with other social agents, as players will imitate other partners' play behaviors to facilitate joint engagement (Eckerman and Stein, 1990). Crucially, when one is playing with another in a competitive or cooperative game, the experience affords both practice and development of a range of skills, including communication, perspective-taking, emotional regulation, emotional recognition, and sportsmanship. For instance, pretend play enables children to learn concepts such as false belief, and more structured turn-taking board games teach reciprocity and strategy. As discussed at length by Piaget ( 1997), play behaviors allow a child to engage with emerging cognitive skills. This is notable in that early play behaviors are considered pivotal childhood milestones for several reasons. Autistic children display atypical play behaviors, tending to prefer independent play, often repetitive, showing less imitation, lacked joint action, and social interaction. When a parent would try and join in the block play, the child would brush their hand away as if their hand was an object rather than belonging to a social agent (Kanner, 1943). For example, rather than building structures with the blocks, a child would use a repetitive motion to move the blocks in recurring ways (i.e., banging them together). Notably, the children showed atypical interactions during periods of play. ![]() Autism can be diagnosed using various methods, with the ADI, ADOS, DISCO being the gold standard amongst other diagnostic tools.Īutism was first identified in the mid twentieth century Kanner ( 1943) and Asperger ( 1944) through a series of case studies, which described children who showed little interest in social interactions, but high interest in restricted topics. ![]() The DSM V (American Psychiatric Association, 2013) which is commonly used for diagnosis describes people with autism as individuals with restricted interests, repetitive behaviors, and social and communicative differences. ![]() Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC) is a neurodevelopmental condition that affects approximately 2% of the population.
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