Leikin ja vuorovaikutuksen muotoja lapsilla, joilla on autismikirjo -tapaustutkimus ; Forms of play and interaction in children with autism spectrum case study

Forms of play and interaction in children with autism spectrum disorder -a case study The purpose of this study is to describe and scrutinize what kind of interaction and play acts three children with autism spectrum disorder have during every day play lessons at school. This study describes the child as an operator during the play. The video recordings from play lessons have been taped during one school year and used as a data. The different forms of play were analyzed by the Preschool Play Behavior Scale (Coplan & Rubin, 1998). The interactions between a child and a child and a child and an adult were analyzed through theory based content analysis. In addition, the child’s play initiatives and how the adults answer to them and guide the play situations have been noticed. Play benefits the cognitive, motoric, social, emotional, and linguistic aspects of all children. In this study play has been studied through Piaget’s developmental theory, Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory, Bornstein’s ecological play theory and Pellegrini’s locomotor play theory. The results show that according to the traditional definitions of play, there was only a little play observed in the video recordings. The children with autism spectrum disorder played little solitary play and there was no rough-and-tumble play at all in this data. Instead, all the children wanted to be in interaction with other persons. The children enjoyed reciprocal relationship and showed it with gestures, face expressions and whole body images. The children needed strong support and pedagogical sensitivity from adults to master play situations and to keep the connection with the other person. The successful interaction between a child and an adult requires sensitive guidance from the adult, which includes connecting, working in the zone of proximal development, imitating the child’s activities, and engaging the child in the activity. In addition, the adult must share attention with the child on the same issue, attract the child through play-fulness and humor, .