Promoting interaction during sociodramatic play: teaching scripts to typical preschoolers and classmates with...

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Childhood Education
• Autism Spectrum Disorder Research

Background:

• Sociodramatic play is crucial for social development in children.
• Children with autistic characteristics often face challenges in social interaction and play.
• Existing interventions may not sufficiently target the specific skills needed for collaborative sociodramatic play.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the impact of teaching sociodramatic scripts on social interaction.
• To determine if script training enhances social-communicative behaviors in mixed-ability groups.
• To assess the maintenance and generalizability of script-training effects.

Main Methods:

• A multiple baseline design was used to evaluate script training.
• Three triads, each with two typically developing children and one child with autistic characteristics, participated.
• Structured play observations were conducted with consistent teacher prompting across conditions.

Main Results:

• All children showed increased frequency of theme-related social behavior after script training.
• Improvements in social-communicative interaction were observed across multiple trained scripts.
• Positive effects were maintained with successive script training and with new partners.

Conclusions:

• Systematic training of sociodramatic scripts is an effective method to enhance social interaction.
• Script training benefits children with and without disabilities during sociodramatic play.
• This approach offers a viable strategy for supporting social-communicative skill development in diverse groups of children.