Teaching Board Games to Two Children with an Autism Spectrum Disorder

Children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often have reduced play skills, interfering with their ability to interact with same-age peers. One way that children interact is to play structured games; thus, teaching children with ASD to play structured games may give them additional opportunities to interact with peers. The purpose of this study was to teach 2 children diagnosed with ASD 3 different age-appropriate structured board and card games. The teaching procedure was implemented in a group instructional format and participants’ behavior was measured in naturalistic probes implemented with the researcher. Utilizing a multiple probe design across behaviors and replicated across participants, results indicated that both participants were able to learn all three games during these naturalistic probes. Furthermore, participants were able to generalize game play to a second teacher in less structured generalization probes.

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