Vicky Lewis

Generativity in the Play of Young People with Autism.

Examines the ability of young people with autism to generate ideas for play. Young people with autism, children with learning difficulties, and younger normal children were asked to generate 12 different actions and follow 12 instructions with a car and a doll. The young people with autism were impaired, relative to the controls, at generating original actions with the car, but were as able as the controls to follow the instructions. However, the young people with autism were not impaired at generating original actions with the doll. All three groups produced similar amounts of symbolic play. Possible explanations for the difference in results for the two toys are discussed.

The assessment of symbolic play in young children: A prototype test

In this paper it is argued that assessing symbolic play (defined as one object substituting for another, a property being attributed to an object which it does not have or an absent object being referred to as if present) is particularly useful for young children in whom language and/or play is not developing normally. A new test of symbolic play is described which assesses the childs ability to substitute her- or himself, a teddy or a non-representational object such as a piece of material for another object, to attribute a property to her- or himself or a teddy, and to refer to an absent object used by her- or himself or a teddy. The play may be modelled or instructed or the child may produce examples of her or his own. Some preliminary results from a group of 43 children are reported. It is concluded that this new test of symbolic play will provide clinicians working with children whose language and/or play is impaired with information of value in reaching a diagnosis and in understanding immediate treatment needs.

Young children's attitudes, after a period of integration, towards peers with severe learning difficulties

ABSTRACT The study reported here focused on changes in attitudes of nine non‐handicapped (NH) six and seven year olds towards peers with severe learning difficulties (SLD) after experience of structured integration sessions over one school year. Year‐end interviews indicated that the NH children had generally maintained their positive attitudes shown towards children with SLD early in the year. This contrasted with attitudes towards classmates thought to be ‘not very clever’ or needing ‘a lot of help’ which remained relatively negative. Knowledge about SLD encompassed four different explanatory models of SLD: sensory‐motor difficulties, including deafness; young age; naughtiness; or ‘bad brains’. Implications of the study, particularly the importance of structure in integrated sessions and the provision of coherent explanations of handicap, are considered.

Validational data on the Warwick Symbolic Play Test

This paper examines the validity of a recently developed test of symbolic play. The Warwick Symbolic Play Test (WSPT) was administered to 60 normal children, 30 girls and 30 boys aged 3-6 years. In addition the childrens expressive and receptive language skills were assessed using the Renfrew Action Picture Test and the British Picture Vocabulary Scale respectively. Significant correlations were found between scores obtained on the play test and both language measures. Exploratory statistics indicated that, when age was taken into account, partial correlations between play and language remained moderate. Further analysis of the results also suggested that the relationship between play and language ability as measured by the tests was stronger for the younger children in the sample than for the older children. These results suggest that the WSPT may indeed be a useful assessment instrument, in conjunction with measures of functional play, for assessment of language ability, diagnosis and possible treatment of language disorders, especially for children under the developmental age of 5 years.

Touch and Vision in Normal and Down's Syndrome Babies

Two experiments are reported with young Downs syndrome and normal children matched for mental age, sex, and social class. In one, Downs syndrome children performed at chance level on two tactual—visual cross-modal tasks, and only the oldest succeeded with one of two visual—visual within-modal tasks. The normal children performed at above chance level on the visual—visual tasks, and on the tactual—visual tasks the oldest succeeded on two and the youngest on one of the tasks. These results suggest that Downs syndrome children may have some sort of difficulty involving tactual perception. The second experiment examined the effect of touch on visual behaviour. Downs syndrome children and their matched controls looked at pairs of shapes which sometimes could be touched and sometimes could not. In the former condition the Downs syndrome children touched less, and looking and touching was less coordinated than that of normal children. However, both groups made fewer but longer looks when they could touch the shapes. In the light of these results the role of tactual perception in Downs syndrome children is discussed.

Young Children's Painting of the Sky and the Ground

Young children often leave a gap between the sky and the horizon in their drawings and paintings. Study 1 examined the landscape paintings of a group of 45 7-10-year-old children and found the children leaving an air gap to be significantly younger than those painting the sky to the horizon. In addition the omission of the air gap was associated with the use of devices to represent three-dimensional space in two dimensions. In Study 2 a group of 7-8-year old chldren painted landscapes on two occasions separated by 7-7.5 months. This study suggested that there are a series of stages between leaving a gap and painting the sky to meet the horizon. It is concluded that painting the sky to meet the horizon may be one of several strategies for representing three-dimensional space, which develops over the age range studied.

HAND DOMINANCE OF PARENTS AND OTHER RELATIVES OF AUTISTIC CHILDREN

Hand preferences of 219 mothers and 186 fathers of autistic children were assessed using the Annett Handedness questionnaire. Subgroups of 54 mothers and 57 fathers with a family history of language‐related developmental disorders were identified. Parents also reported the handedness of other relatives. Mothers (but not fathers) in the main group were significantly more likely to be consistently right‐handed than females in the general population, but this was not specifically associated with a family history of language problems. There was no evidence of an increased incidence of consistent left‐handedness in either the whole group of parents or the subgroups. Reported handedness of other relatives showed no abnormal distribution in relation to a comparison group. The findings are discussed in relation to theories about genetic factors in language‐related developmental disorders in general, and autism in particular.

Evaluative explanations in childrens' narratives

Labov and Waletzky ( 1967) identified two basic constituents of a narrative sequence; narrative and evaluative clauses. Narrative clauses refer simply to a statement of the actual events as they occur in a story, listed in a sequential order. Evaluative clauses go beyond a straightforward sequential analysis of events and attempt to evaluate the outcome of particular events, moving away from a simple description towards an analysis of why events might have taken place. According