Brief report: effect of a focused imitation intervention on social functioning in children with autism.

Ingersoll (2012) ran a small RCT with the preschoolers with autism. Half got ten short sessions of adult-led imitation games. The rest kept their usual therapy.

Kids copied silly faces, hand claps, and toy moves. Sessions lasted 15 minutes and happened twice a week for five weeks.

After the short program, the imitation group started more joint-attention bids. They looked, pointed, and showed toys to adults more often.

Six weeks later the gains were still there. Parents also rated their kids as happier and more social than the control group.

Kourassanis-Velasquez et al. (2019) extend these findings. They show you can get the same jump in joint attention by training peers instead of adults.

Pérez-Fuster et al. (2022) conceptually replicate the result with augmented-reality imitation games. Kids still gained joint attention, but the tool was a screen instead of a person.

Liu et al. (2021) seem to disagree. They found gaze-timing problems remain in older autistic kids. The clash fades when you note age and setting: Brooke worked with 3- to young learners in classrooms; Qinyi tested 5- to young learners in a lab eye-tracking task.

You can squeeze a social boost into tiny therapy pockets. Ten short imitation games doubled joint-attention starts and the change lasted over a month. Try opening your next session with two minutes of copy-cat play. Track who starts the next show-and-tell bid.