Parents’ modelling of play skills in spontaneous interactions may promote autistic children’s play behaviours

Abstract

BackgroundAutistic children always encounter difficulties in engaging in various play acts. Their parents can play a critical role in their play development. Among the different strategies adopted by parents, modelling, which involves parents demonstrating play acts to their children, can help the latter to develop play skills through observation and imitation. However, very little is known about whether modelling during parent-child spontaneous interactions might influence the production of play acts in autistic children, in comparison to other strategies, such as suggestion, command, and imitation. The present study addressed this issue, and we hypothesized that parents’ modelling of play acts was positively associated with autistic children’s production of play acts. MethodThirty-seven autistic children aged between 73 and 114 months (M = 92.1) from a special school in Hong Kong and their parents were recruited for this study. The parents were instructed to play freely with their children for 20 min. The sessions were videotaped and coded. The children’s play acts were categorized into sensory, relational, functional, and symbolic play, while the parents’ play strategies were categorized into modelling, command, suggestion, and imitation. ResultsAfter controlling for chronological age, autism severity and intelligence, the multiple linear regression showed that the parents’ modelling strategy was significantly and positively associated with the number of their children’s play acts (B =.217, p = .046). ConclusionThe modelling of play acts by the parents is associated with their autistic children’s play acts. It is advisable for parents to demonstrate play activities in daily-life interactions.