IMITATIVE PLAY DRILLS
Home Drills/Targets Imitative Play Targets
Teaching Playskills to
Children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder
Book
Excerpt!
USE OF
IMITATIVE PLAY DRILLS
Imitative play
drills can create a core set of skills in your childís playskills program.
Imitative play drills really strengthen the imitation skills that can lead to
observational learning. They are not an end unto themselves but rather serve as
a launch point to other skills. The many uses of imitative play drills include:
… To improve
imitative skills
… To demonstrate
the various methods of play
… To allow your
child to experience different forms of play
… To discover your childís
interests
… To stimulate
brainstorming
… To form a base
for expansion into other areas of play
… To begin the
evolution from imitation to observational learning from a peer
I have never directly taught Justin
(ASD, almost 4) how to play. The
only things I have taught him are things you would have to teach any
child. I showed him how to bat,
how to shoot a basket, how to kick a ball, how to hit a golf ball and a hockey
puck. We taught him how to ride a
tricycle/bicycle and how to rollerblade.
Mostly he learned all these skills by imitation. We showed him, he watched, he did what
we showed him.
IMITATIVE PLAY
DRILL TECHNIQUES
Imitative drills are demonstrative drills. Imitative play
drills involve nonverbal and verbal imitation with toys, activities, and
verbalizations. These drills can be started at the very beginning of a program:
nonverbal imitation is one of the earliest drills in ABA programs. The tutor
says, ìDo thisî or something similar and then demonstrates the action and/or
verbalization. The child is prompted to imitate his or her actions and verbalizations. We
started these drills in discrete trial training (DTT) format at the table and
then moved to the floor. The tutor tried to avoid "instructing"
verbally, saying simply ìDo thisî (imitation) rather than giving a specific
instruction (receptive language). When the child knows a few items under each
activity, start chaining them together as a sequence of actions.
Imitative play can serve as a testing ground to reveal your
childís interests. Rather than forcing your child to play with every toy made
or to participate in every activity known to childhood, you present him or her
with a variety of actions and toys and try them out. If, at some point in
training, the child becomes interested in a toy or activity and does a
spontaneous action with it, then you can celebrate and allow him or her to take
the lead briefly. Imitate the child and work towards a real give-and-take
situation between tutor and child, one in which they alternate between leading
and following.
In addition, this method of imitative teaching (ìDo thisî) makes the child actually do
the action rather than passively observe the action. This experiential learning
is easier for a child than watching or hearing the tutor explain things to him
or her. It also does not require that the child be able to follow complex oral
instructions.
Teaching a child imitation skills as they relate to toys can
have an effect on inappropriate play as well. The child can now go to a toy
that has been taught and pick it up and do something appropriate with it
(instead of rubbing it on his or her face or shaking it).
You can also view these drills as a brainstorming technique for
creating play targets. In the beginning, the parent will be creating the
targets, but this process should evolve to the point where the tutor is
ad-libbing new targets during therapy. One hopes the child will start to ad-lib
targets as well (these actions are written down and reinforced the next time
that activity is done). Next the tutor and child will start to give and
take--each suggesting things to do. When a peer is introduced, the same
interaction can take place, with the peer leading, then the child, back and
forth.
Another important goal of these imitative play drills is to
give the child the ability to go up to a group of kids doing something (typical
preschool center-time), watch them, imitate what they are doing, and suggest
new actions. Being familiar with the toy or activity also allows him or her to
join in the play even if the child is not yet able to hold a sustained
conversation about it.
My child is somewhat verbal and he is
just beginning to imitate other children at the playground. He watches a child
dig sand like a dog (digging between their legs) and he imitates that. When a
child runs out of the wading pool or pretends to be an alligator, he will also
imitate that. This skill is just emerging and is somewhat inconsistent but MUCH
better than even 3 to 4 months ago when he didn't even acknowledge other kids
were in the park with him!
We did these imitative drills frequently
the first year of therapy. We did imitative play drills every 30 minutes during
therapy, and in addition we played with our child directly between every other
drill during downtime, redirecting any inappropriate play. We kept a checklist
of all downtime activities and tried to do different activities from those done
by the person in the previous session. We tried to encourage spontaneous play
by placing toys and activities around the room and even changing them after the
longer breaks. We rotated toys in and out of the room. All of the toys used
during downtime were also targeted in the formal imitative play drills so that
they could be generalized and either the tutor or the child could discover new
targets.
If I had to do these early play drills
over, I would do several things differently. First, I would not have used so many toys. If my child
showed an interest in a toy, I would have stuck with that one for a while and
really mined it for play and language. Obviously, you have to be aware of
perseveration, but typical children carry around the same baby doll until it
falls apart and their parents donít take it away from them because they are
being rigid. You have to be careful not to confuse comfort and enjoyment of an
activity with perseveration and rigidity. Play is supposed to be enjoyable.
Second, I would have been more aware of the
normal development of play. This knowledge can help keep you from forcing too advanced play
on your child, causing confusion and frustration all around. Figurine play is a
good example. Figure 1 (see p. X) demonstrates a rough progression of figurine
play. For example, a child might want nothing to do with figurines. Or the
child may simply hold a familiar figurine, carry it around, and talk about it
(ìItís Obi Wan Kenobi!î). Or he or she might want enjoy setting up a scene
(i.e., a dollhouse) and moving the figurines into different positions in the
scene (scene setup). Or he or she might be able to move a figure (figurine
action pretend) and perhaps talk about what the figure is doing (figurine
action narration). Your child may
even want to act out scenes from movies or books using the figurines, but still may not be developmentally ready to
move and talk for
the doll as if the doll could control its own actions and had its own
personality (figurine personalities). Some children never do this activity or
social figurine play. You have to be aware of these stages in using figurines
and other activities so that you can work with where the child is
developmentally. Our imitative play targets reflect that we started in using
figurines early in our program. While my child eventually played with these
items spontaneously (for example, the Fisher-Price Pirate Ship), I believe that
we introduced them too early in his program, skipping some more developmentally
appropriate (and fun) activities.
Third, I would have used the drills more as a guide in
moving to more sophisticated, reciprocal, and spontaneous play rather than as
an end unto themselves. Figure 1 (see p. X) shows how a base of imitative
targets can lead into all sorts of types of play. As you go away from the basic
imitative targets, you are heading into higher and higher developmental areas,
and the imitative way of teaching will fade to a more observational and
cooperative style. For example, if the child is imitating well doing symbolic
pretend play with a doll, I would move that activity into a looser pretend
activity, encouraging him or her to add targets and really play rather than
keeping the activity as a strict imitative drill. Not all forms of play can be
fitted into this model illustrated by Figure 1, but the model does give you an
idea of the variety of play and a sense of the hierarchy of play development.
After a few months of single targets in our imitative play
program, we did try to loosen up our language and chain the movements, having
our child imitate a series of actions, thus simulating more normal play. At
this point, our child would start to take the lead and do some of his own
actions. This initiative was exciting, but we still made him imitate us for new
targets with new activities. When he took the lead, we would follow and try to
expand the play as much as possible. We did not originally set out do these
drills in this way. Our consultant wanted us to continue to concentrate on
imitation only, even after our child was thinking up his own targets. On our own,
however, we started using the targets as jumping off places to other skills.
Only in retrospect do I see how using this drillís targets in this manner
evolved into later forms of play.
