The Lowe and Costello Symbolic Play Test in socially impaired children.
Symbolic play test scores can oversell what kids actually do in free play.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Rosenberg (1986) gave the Lowe and Costello Symbolic Play Test to children with social problems. Then the team watched the same kids play freely.
They compared test scores to real play to see if the test matched what kids actually did.
What they found
Kids scored higher on the test than they played in real life. The test said they could pretend, but they rarely did it on their own.
This gap means the test can over-rate a child’s true play skills.
How this fits with other research
Hatfield et al. (2019) also warn that scores can fool us. They show mouse social tests give false positives when we only look inside one group. Both papers say: check the score against real behavior.
Wallace et al. (2010) found the opposite fix works. Giving simple labels during a card game helped adults with ID make better choices. Extra symbols helped them, while the play test’s symbols misled us here.
Hassin-Herman et al. (1992) prove social behavior can change fast with feedback. So low spontaneous play is not a fixed deficit; it just needs the right prompt.
Why it matters
Before you write goals, watch the child play for five minutes. A high test score does not guarantee real-life pretending. Pair the test with free-play probes to set true baselines and avoid over-estimating skills.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The Symbolic Play Test was given to 31 socially impaired and 29 sociable children retarded in language comprehension, with the same range of age (5 to 12 years) and intelligence (profoundly retarded to normal). Play test age and spontaneous pretend play were at a similar level in the sociable children, but, in the socially impaired, spontaneous pretend play was lower than the play test age would predict. In some of the latter it was absent, and in the others it was narrow and repetitive in form. For subgroups of socially impaired and sociable children with similar play ages, there was no significant difference in language comprehension age. The discrepancy, in socially impaired children, between levels on tests and spontaneous use of skills was discussed.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 1986 · doi:10.1007/BF01531730