A repeated measures single subject design was used to examine the effectiveness of a joint play approach embedded in professional practice, in supporting pretend play for autistic children. Seven autistic children, aged 5-8 years, with a placement within a specialist educational provision, and who demonstrated restricted play, participated in…

Although neurotypical children often spend the majority of their time engaged in play activities, children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can present with substantial delays in the development of play skills, requiring intensive intervention. Although targets for language and basic learning skills are often selected based on the development…

This study focuses on the multimodal communication of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) compared to typically developing (TD) children. Eleven children with ASD (aged from 28 to 79 months) and 11 TD children (from 12 to 30 months) were matched by their productive vocabulary. We observed their communicative production in a…

Play is often used in interventions to improve social outcomes for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Play is a primary occupation of childhood and, therefore, an important outcome of intervention. The Ultimate Guide to Play, Language and Friendship (PLF) is a peer-mediated intervention for 6-11-year-old children with ASD. A total of…

This observational study focuses on prosocial behaviors of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) during an interaction with their older, typically developing sibling (TD-Sibs). Twenty-eight sibling dyads, in which the younger sibling was diagnosed with ASD (ASD-Sibs), were video-recorded at home playing a game of their choice. Video…

Joint engagement involves a child coordinating their attention between a person and a shared event. Children with autism present with impaired joint engagement. Playdates are a common way that children socially engage yet have been largely overlooked in the social skills literature. Requesting skills have been conceptualized as pivotal, producing…

Activity schedules consist of a series of visual discriminative stimuli, arranged in booklets or binders, which function as prompts for appropriate behavior. Although activity schedules are useful, their typical presentation in binders can be cumbersome and stigmatizing, placing additional barriers for independence and inclusion. The purpose of…

Contradictory reports of play strengths and weaknesses for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) persist in the literature. We compared the play of 19 children with ASD to 19 typically developing (TD) children matched on language and cognitive skills. All children were verbal. Results revealed no differences in indiscriminate actions,…

Delays in social and communication skills are associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Structured play groups (SPGs) was deemed an evidence-based practice (EBP) for children with ASD. A critical review of research published within the past 16 years and accessible in four databases was conducted with a total of 3,153 articles identified of…

Peer-mediated interventions (PMIs) are often used to support children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to develop social skills. However, more investigation is needed to better understand the role of peers as both intervention recipients and models. Sixty-five typically developing peers who participated in a PMI for children with ASD were…

The aim of this study was to examine classification accuracy for the expressive language skills of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in terms of object play and imitation scores. A total of 61 children with ASD, who were 2.0-5.11 years old, were included in the study. In order to collect data play and imitation assessment tasks which…

The vast majority of joint attention interventions for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are geared toward toddlers and preschoolers as it is an early developmental skill. However, many of the youngsters do not acquire joint attention despite these early interventions and subsequently do not exhibit joint attention later in life. In the…

In this study we investigated the impact of parental language input on language development and associated neuroscillatory patterns in toddlers at risk of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Forty-six mother-toddler dyads at either high (n = 22) or low (n = 24) familial risk of ASD completed a longitudinal, prospective study including free-play,…

We examined the effects of the least-to-most prompting (LTM) procedure with contingent imitation (CI) on increasing the frequency and diversity of pretend play in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) using a multiple probe across toy sets single-case research design. Three children with ASD ages 5 to 6 years took part in the study. LTM was…

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often display deficits in social and conversational skills. One method used to improve social deficits includes video modeling. When targeting conversational skills, few studies have included individuals with ASD as conversational partners. We evaluated the effects of video modeling on commenting…