The Impact of Social Play Activities on Promoting Social Interactions of High-Functioning Autistic Children in Taiwan

Open Access
- Author:
- TSAO, YA-LUN
- Graduate Program:
- Curriculum and Instruction
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- February 04, 2009
- Committee Members:
- Thomas Daniel Yawkey, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Thomas Daniel Yawkey, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Pamela S Wolfe, Committee Member
Ladislaus M Semali, Committee Member
Rama B Radhakrishna, Committee Member - Keywords:
- social play activities
high-functioning autistic children
pivotal response training (PRT) - Abstract:
- Social play activities mediated by peers with Pivotal Response Training (PRT) are interventions for enhancing high-functioning autistic children’s social behavior. A multiple baseline across subjects and across peers design was employed for this research. The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of Pivotal Response Training in social play activities with peer mediation to enhance the development of 7- to 8-year-old high functioning autistic children’s social skills with the focus on maintaining interactions, initiating conversations, and initiating play. Interviews and observations were the methods of data collection. Interviews were conducted with the parents and the teacher of the three autistic children, before and after the play sessions, respectively, to understand their current level of social skills, to check the differences in the targeted social behaviors. Observations were collected from three dyads (a normal child and an autistic one) in three successive phases: before the intervention, during the intervention, and for maintenance play sessions. Since the play sessions comprised the social interactions that occurred between each dyad, the data analysis focused on the occurrences and frequencies of the three targeted social behaviors. Two techniques, trend-line and percentage of overlap, were especially useful for the quantitative analysis. The results of this study showed that the three high-functioning autistic children’s social behaviors for maintaining interactions, initiating conversations, and initiating play were enhanced by the social play activities involving interactions with peers with PRT. Interviews, which provided perspectives of the teacher and the parents of the three high-functioning autistic children supported the findings regarding their performance of social skills in other contexts, such as at home and in regular classes.