Increasing "Object-Substitution" Symbolic Play in Young Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders.
A short burst of intraverbal prompts plus modeling turns verbal preschoolers with autism into creative pretend players.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team worked with five verbal preschoolers who have autism.
They wanted to teach "object-substitution" play. That means using a block as a phone or a stick as a spoon.
The kids got intraverbal training. The adult showed a picture, asked a question, and modeled the pretend action.
What they found
Every child learned to pick up the wrong object and play with it as if it were the real thing.
The skill showed up after only a few teaching rounds and kept going in later checks.
How this fits with other research
Ledbetter-Cho et al. (2016) used the same prompting-and-modeling bones to teach safety skills instead of play.
Zhou et al. (2018) ran a near-copy design with autistic 5- to 8-year-olds, but they taught written sentences. Both studies got quick gains and mixed maintenance, showing the frame works across very different targets.
Ledbetter-Cho et al. (2021) came later and added an extra step: after BST taught the safety response, they had to add discrimination drills to stop kids from saying "no" to police. That heads-up matters here—watch that pretend play doesn’t drop or shift once the room changes.
Why it matters
Symbolic play is a gateway to flexible language and social give-and-take. With only picture prompts, a question, and a quick model, you can unlock this skill in minutes. Plug the package into your naturalistic play routine, then probe in new spots so the kid doesn’t only "feed" the doll at the blue table.
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Join Free →Pick one play scheme, grab three odd objects, show a photo, ask "What could this be?", model once, and let the child take the next turn.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) may not develop symbolic play skills, so such skills need to be taught specifically. We report an experiment regarding a procedure targeting "object-substitution" symbolic play skills. The "object-substitution" symbolic play behavior occurred when the child labeled a common object with the name of a substitute and used the object to perform a play action (e.g., As she put a bowl on her head, she called it a hat). A multiple probe across behaviors design was employed with five children (four boys and one girl, aged 3 to 6 years) with ASD. All children had verbal communication and demonstrated functional play and generalized imitation, but no symbolic play skills prior to the study. The instruction consisted of intraverbal training, picture prompts, and modeling of play actions. All children demonstrated object-substitution symbolic play skills after the instruction. The occurrences of response generalization were also discussed.
Behavior modification, 2019 · doi:10.1177/0145445517739276