{"id":507,"date":"2016-07-06T18:07:21","date_gmt":"2016-07-06T18:07:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/rablab\/?p=507"},"modified":"2016-07-06T18:13:44","modified_gmt":"2016-07-06T18:13:44","slug":"autism-and-play-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/rablab\/2016\/07\/06\/autism-and-play-part-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Autism and Play: Part I"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 class=\"title-header\">Through play, children with autism can hone thinking skills<\/h2>\n<h4>In May 2016, Raphael Bernier, PhD, wrote an article in Spectrum News about\u00a0play and autism. \u00a0Below summarizes the article, and you can find the full version\u00a0by clicking this\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/spectrumnews.org\/opinion\/viewpoint\/through-play-children-with-autism-can-hone-thinking-skills\/\">link<\/a>!<\/h4>\n<p>Play provides some of a child\u2019s first opportunities to rehearse social interactions, generate novel ideas, toy with symbolism and develop narratives \u2014 skills that serve us later in life, particularly in our highly social world.\u00a0For children with autism, however, these opportunities do not present themselves so easily. Yet play is still an important developmental tool for these children.<\/p>\n<p>Many children with autism show unusual features in their play starting early in life. These include reduced creativity and imagination, such as recreating scenarios from a television show verbatim. The play of children with autism also tends to have a persistent sensorimotor or ritualistic quality. \u00a0In assessing children with autism, clinicians look at several different types of play, including symbolic play and functional play. Children with autism are often typical in their functional and sensorimotor play at age 3, but they show poorer pretend play skills than their typical peers do.<\/p>\n<p>Cognitive abilities, language skills and executive functions such as self-control and mental flexibility all influence the development of play and its application to clinical settings. Autism affects all these domains. \u00a0<span style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">Many children with autism are missing out on the opportunities and benefits of pretend play.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The relationship between executive function, language and pretend play provides new avenues for treatment. Developing therapies to improve executive function, for example, can help children with autism benefit from pretend play, which creates natural learning opportunities for a prepared mind. \u00a0Pretend play itself can be considered a form of treatment \u2014 one that costs nothing, requires no professional training and can happen anywhere.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/spectrumnews.org\/opinion\/viewpoint\/through-play-children-with-autism-can-hone-thinking-skills\/\">https:\/\/spectrumnews.org\/opinion\/viewpoint\/through-play-children-with-autism-can-hone-thinking-skills\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>We\u00a0will continue to explore Autism and Play, so stay tuned for more posts on this fun, informative topic! ~The Bernier Lab<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Through play, children with autism can hone thinking skills In May 2016, Raphael Bernier, PhD, wrote an article in Spectrum News about\u00a0play and autism. \u00a0Below summarizes the article, and you can find the full version\u00a0by clicking this\u00a0link! Play provides some of a child\u2019s first opportunities to rehearse social interactions, generate novel ideas, toy with symbolism &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/rablab\/2016\/07\/06\/autism-and-play-part-i\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Autism and Play: Part I<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-educational","category-play"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/rablab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/rablab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/rablab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/rablab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/rablab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/rablab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":513,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/rablab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507\/revisions\/513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/rablab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/rablab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/rablab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}