Effect of the responsive environment for children with high functioning pervasive developmental disorder

Abstract

This study examined the effectiveness of the responsive environment for social interaction in 6 high functioning children (10 to 12 years old) with pervasive developmental disorder. These children have impairment in the development of reciprocal social interaction. Using the 'Jenga' game to construct the environment - a tower-creation game using 54 wooden blocks - two players take turns to remove a wooden block from the wooden tower and place it on top of the tower. Five experiments were executed during a period of 7 months. Opponents play for 15 minutes per experiment. High functioning children with pervasive developmental disorder competed with the researcher as the opponent. The child receives the opponent's behavior and, in return, the opponent's reaction. The responsive environment was measured by the reaction that a researcher received from a child. This environment has reciprocity, changeableness and dynamic properties. One reactive time at after a single play of both a child and researcher was adopted as the control- measure to quantify social interaction. The results indicated that interaction with children's environments changed on the whole, and suggested that the setting of responsive environment enabled children to experience social interaction continuously and improve their perspectives.