Pretend Play Facilitates Language Acquisition in Children with Autism

Kariel Thompson, a Los Angeles-based (SLP), assesses and treats children with developmental disabilities and communications disorders. Kariel Thompson’s expertise includes treating children with autism to help them with socialization.

One of how an SLP therapist can help a child with autism in understanding social cues embedded in the language is through pretend play. Pretend play incorporates games that show them how to use one object to represent another, including words. Through pretend play, words represent people, objects, abstract ideas, physical states (tired, hungry, or hot), and emotions (frustration, anger, or happiness). At the same time, this approach assists with foundational cognitive skills.

In its strictest sense, pretend play involves the therapist performing some action and then pulling the child into the conversation. However, some SLP experts believe that children should enjoy and be engaged in the activity to benefit from it. For example, a mother sits on the ground with her child surrounded by the child’s favorite dolls. She then watches the child pick up one and hug it. The mother mimics the daughter while waiting to see how the child responds. This exercise allows the daughter to take cues and actively engage with the mother.

Types and Causes of Communication Disorders

The former clinical director of Julia Hobbs Speech Pathology, Kariel Thompson currently contributes to the Los Angeles, California, community with services for children with developmental disabilities and communication disorders and their families. Kariel Thompson holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of California, Irvine, and a master’s degree in communication disorders from California State University.

Communication disorders involve continuous issues related to speech and language. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), there are five categories of communication disorders: language disorder, speech sound disorder, childhood-onset fluency disorder (stuttering), social (pragmatic) communication disorder, and unspecified communication disorder.

Frequently, the causes of these disorders are unknown, but they can occur due to certain medical and neurological complications. Some causes of communication disorders are autism, intellectual disability, and neurological disorders. Other possible causes are hearing loss, brain injury, vocal cord injury, physical impairments, drug abuse, developmental disorders, and emotional or psychiatric disorders.

Research Highlights Effectiveness of PRT for Children with Autism

Kariel Thompson is a California-based speech language pathologist who leverages nearly a decade of experience to treat children with communication disorders and developmental disabilities. In her practice, Kariel Thompson is particularly interested in autism and how it affects speech development.

Learning how to communicate best with children who have autism is one of the biggest challenges of being a parent of a child diagnosed with the developmental disorder. While many children with autism have verbal skills, they generally aren’t able to express themselves adequately, and this can be discouraging for primary caregivers. New research, however, suggests that pivotal response therapy (PRT) may be the most effective treatment for these concerns.

Grace Gengoux, PhD, led a Stanford University study examining four dozen children with autism. The children, who had serious language delays, were between the ages of two and five years old. Half of the children received PRT while the others continued whichever therapy they had been receiving prior to the study. By the end of the six-month study, children in the PRT group were showing greater social communication skills and were speaking more overall than the children in the comparison group.

The goal of PRT is to leverage a child’s motivations to facilitate increased and improved speech. An example would be a toy in which a child would express interest; if he or she is able to name the object, the child can be given the toy as a reward.