Teaching Typically Developing Children to Promote Social Play With Their Siblings with Autism

Abstract

Siblings are generally the most important "peer" in children's lives. Unfortunately, children with autism often do not play or interact a great deal with their typically developing siblings, largely because the children with autism do not have the necessary language and social skills to do so and because their siblings do not know how to facilitate play with their brother or sister. The purpose of this study was to teach three typically-developing children (ages 4-6) skills that were likely to increase the amount and quality of social play interactions with their brothers who have autism. Using a teaching interaction procedure, the typical children were taught how to (a) provide clear instructions, (b) prompt, and (c) reinforce play related behaviors such as joining into a play activity, sharing preferred toys, and appropriate toy play. All three children learned the targeted skills during role-plays with a teacher and, to a large part, generalized the skills when they played with their brothers with autism. In addition, for some children, learning these skills increased the children's levels of positive interactions and decreased levels of negative interactions during a free play period.