This research explores the possibility of providing a general guideline for the use of LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® (LSP) in youth work and examining the experiences of the frontline youth workers in Hong Kong who have adopted LSP to engage youngsters, who have been experiencing enormous socioeconomic challenges in different aspects. A 12-session workshop…

Children with autism have deficits in social interaction, including the failure to engage in sharing responses. Four children with autism were taught a sharing response chain. The treatment package (manual guidance, auditory prompts, and contingent access to toy play and social interaction with the recipient instructor) was introduced successively…

Twenty profoundly retarded children (mean chronological age 14 years) were trained to play with ordinary toys, half by behavior modification and half by a control procedure. Operant training led to some increases in total toy contact but was not significantly more effective than the control technique in promoting independent constructive play.…

Two experiments with four autistic children (ages 5-13) demonstrated that reinforcement of appropriate toy play was an effective means of reducing disruptive behaviors of autistic children in unsupervised settings. (Author/DB)

Six four-year-olds were subjects in two experiments on correspondence training procedures with toy play behaviors. The experiments found that presence or absence of children's verbalizations exerted no influence on play with target toys, and that children were less likely to engage in target behaviors when no antecedent experimenter verbalization…

The automatically reinforced self-injury of a girl (age 11) with autism was treated by providing noncontingent access to a single set of preferred toys during 30-minute sessions. Rotating toy sets after 10 minutes or providing access to multiple toy sets resulted in reductions that lasted the entire 30 minutes. (Contains four references.)…

Reinforcing contact with toys by providing chocolate milk odors, and tactile reinforcement helped to reduce the self injurious behaviors, feces smearing, and destructive behavior of a profoundly retarded deaf/blind hyperactive female. The underlying assumption of the approach was that increasing toy contact would result in improved alternative…

Two experiments, one involving two elementary-aged girls with autism and one involving three boys with serious behavior disorders, found that the use of contingent access to free time and play materials increased the rate of correct math problems completed and decreased the error rates. (Author/JDD)

The out-of-seat behavior of a highly disruptive 4 year old with severe disabilities was substantially reduced using differential reinforcement of incompatible behavior. The boy's in-seat behavior expanded from less than a minute to 20 minutes. The providers' use of physical restraint decreased to near-zero levels, and the boy's appropriate toy…

Certain play situations are very difficult for young visually impaired children. This booklet focuses on three areas of play: exploring toys and materials, making transitions from one activity to another, and playing with other children. Through anecdotal descriptions of common situations encountered by caregivers, the booklet discusses why these…