Short Play and Communication Evaluation: Teachers' assessment of core social communication and play skills with young children with autism.
Teachers can run a 15-minute toy-based test to spot joint-attention and play gaps in preschoolers with autism.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Shire et al. (2018) asked preschool teachers to run a 15-minute play test with toddlers and preschoolers with autism.
The Short Play and Communication Evaluation checks joint attention, pretend play, and turn-taking while the child plays with bubbles, blocks, and a dollhouse.
No extra staff, no fancy gear—just the teacher, a toy bin, and a simple score sheet.
What they found
Teachers gave the test the same way every time and used the scores to pick clear next goals.
The tool worked in low-budget classrooms and took under 20 minutes start to finish.
How this fits with other research
Cunningham (2012) warned that no gold-standard social test existed for little kids with autism—Shire et al. (2018) now fills that gap with a teacher-friendly kit.
Sterrett et al. (2025) later showed most social tests barely detect change; Y’s tool still needs a sensitivity check, but it gives teachers a place to start.
Barrett et al. (1987) proved that play and joint attention predict language; Y’s test bundles both skills into one quick scale, turning old lab facts into everyday data.
Why it matters
You can train aides or teachers to give this play test during free-choice time. The scores show which child needs help pointing, sharing, or pretending, so you write goals that fit real classroom life. Try it next week—grab three toys, watch for five minutes, and let the numbers pick your target.
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Join Free →Pick one child, open the toy bin, and tally joint-attention bids for five minutes—use the count to set a sharing goal.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Children with autism spectrum disorder experience delays in the development of nonverbal social communication gestures to request and to share (joint attention) as well as play skills such that intervention is required. Although such tools exist in research settings, community stakeholders also require access to brief, simple, and reliable tools to assess students' skills and set appropriate intervention targets. This study includes a sequence of two trials to examine implementation outcomes including adoption, fidelity, and feasibility of The Short Play and Communication Evaluation by educational professionals who work with preschoolers and toddlers with autism spectrum disorder in low-resource community classrooms. Findings demonstrate that classroom staff can deliver the Short Play and Communication Evaluation with high fidelity, collect live data, and set appropriate social communication and play skill targets for use in intervention. Furthermore, study 2 demonstrates that modifications to the study protocol resolved differences in children's skill profile obtained from the established research measures.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2018 · doi:10.1177/1362361316674092