Imitation, social engagement and representational play in typical and atypical development

The play of children with and without autism was observed to meet two main objectives: to describe the impaired as well as the unimpaired pretend play abilities of toddlers with autism, and to examine the interrelationship between representational play, immediate and deferred imitation, and triadic and dyadic forms of social engagement in typical and atypical development. Three models of the autism play deficit were evaluated. One model is consistent with Piaget's theory that the symbolic schemas expressed in play are enabled by deferred imitation (Piaget, 1962). A second model examined is consistent with Leslie's (1987) Theory of Mind Module theory. The third model, herein referred to as Rogers and Pennington's (1991) dyadic engagement model, posits a link in autism between impaired play and a primary disruption in reciprocal social interaction.;Participants. The seventy-three participants examined for this study included 35 children with Autistic Disorder (AD), 19 children with Developmental Delay of mixed etiology (DD), and 16 typically-developing toddlers (TD).;Methods. Both spontaneous and prompted (modeled) play conditions were recorded. Representational play maturity was evaluated based on the representation of agency (i.e., animating dolls), the symbolic transformation of objects, and the integration of play-acts into sequences of actions. In addition to the level of representational maturity demonstrated during each play condition, the investigation also focused on the frequency with which pretend play acts were performed.;Results. Autism-specific play differences were exposed in spontaneous as well as prompted play conditions and for symbolic as well as pre-symbolic (i.e. "functional") play. Deferred imitation uniquely predicted the spontaneous enactment of representational play acts but not the overall play maturity level, irrespective of diagnosis. When measures of dyadic engagement, joint attention, and immediate imitation were entered step-wise into a hierarchical regression model, only immediate imitation uniquely predicted symbolic play performance for children with autism.;Conclusion. The findings are consistent with a model of autism implicating multiple interrelated disruptions in social functioning beginning in infancy with reciprocal social exchanges such as imitation and affect mirroring.