Taking a Closer Look at Functional Play in Children with Autism

Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, Vol. 31, No. 1, 2001

Taking a Closer Look at Functional Play in Children with Autism

Emma Williams,1,2 Vasudevi Reddy,1 and Alan Costall1

Research evidence indicates that children with autism may experience problems with func-tional play, in addition to their well-documented deficits in symbolic play. However, as a re-sult of the tendency of previous studies to group all functional play into a single category, theprecise nature and extent of this deficit remains unclear. The present study undertook a morerefined analysis of such play, subtyping the functional acts into various categories, in termsof the developmental progression suggested by research with typical infants. The functionalplay of children with autism was compared to that of developmentally matched children withDown syndrome and typical infants. Although there were no group differences in overall mea-sures of the proportion of total play time spent in functional play and in the number of func-tional acts performed, a closer analysis of the composition of this play did reveal striking,qualitative differences. The functional play of the autism group was less elaborated, less var-ied, and less integrated than that of the controls. The implications of these findings are ex-plored in relation to current theoretical models of autism and in relation to the role of otherpeople in mediating the appropriate use of objects.

KEY WORDS: Autism; functional play.

INTRODUCTION

Early semiotic theories viewed symbolic develop-ment as a gradually unfolding process, rooted firmly inearly sensorimotor behavior (Piaget, 1962; Werner &Kaplan, 1963). Piaget (1962) proposed that symbolsemerge by means of a progressive differentiation be-tween the “signifier” (the actual object or action used bythe child) and the “signified” (the absent object or ac-tion being represented) which is mediated by a numberof transitional behaviors. Similarly Vygotsky (1978) por-trayed the development of play as one involving a grad-ual separation of meaning from the object and of mean-ing from action. Far from arising from a sudden momentof insight, he suggests that the decoupling comes about

only as the result of a slow, hard, progressive process:“The child does not do this all at once because it is ter-ribly difficult for a child to sever the thought (the mean-ing of a word) from the object” (p. 97). In light of thesetheoretical approaches, research on children’s play hasbeen concerned to identify the composition of variousplay behaviors at different ages and to establish the se-quence of changes that occur with increasing maturity(Belsky & Most, 1981; El’Konin, 1966; Fein & Apfel,1979; Fenson, Kagan, Kearlsey, & Zelazo, 1976;Marino, 1988; McCune-Nicolich & Fenson, 1984; Nicol-ich, 1977; Vondra & Belsky, 1989). Three major trendsin the development of pretense were identified: decon-textualization,which allowed pretend3 play to occur withdecreasing environmental support; decentration,wheresymbolic actions are freed from the child’s body, al-lowing the use of dolls and other people for expressing

670162-3257/01/0200-0067$19.50/0 © 2001 Plenum Publishing Corporation

1 Department of Psychology, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth,PO1 2DY, United Kingdom.

2 Address all correspondence to E. Williams, Department of Psycho-logy, King Alfred’s College, Sparkford Road, Winchester, SO224NR; e-mail: [email protected]

3 Unless otherwise stated, where the term “pretend” or “pretense” isused in this paper this will be taken to include both functional andsymbolic play.

pretend actions and allowing the adoption of others’ ac-tions; and integration, leading to sequentially and laterhierarchically organised play (Fenson & Ramsay, 1980;McCune-Nicolich & Fenson, 1984).

In drawing a stark, categorical distinction betweenfunctional and symbolic play, Leslie’s (1987) analysisof pretence represents a radical departure from previousassumptions of a gradual evolution from simple to pro-gressively more elaborate play behaviors (Piaget, 1962;Vygotsky, 1978; Werner & Kaplan, 1963). According toLeslie (1987), symbolic play can take three forms: ob-ject substitution, the attribution of false properties, andthe attribution of presence to imaginary objects. Func-tional play is defined as “the appropriate use of an objector the conventional association of two or more objects,such as a spoon to feed a doll, or placing a teacup on asaucer” (Ungerer & Sigman, 1981, p. 320). Leslie (1987)proposed that symbolic play is underpinned by a morecomplex representational system than that which under-lies the production of functional play. “True” pretence(i.e., symbolic play), he argued, requires not only a first-order representation of the pen as a rocket, for example,but also a second-order representation aboutthis repre-sentation (a metarepresentation), namely, that the repre-sentation is not true, the object is not really a rocket: “Inboth functional play and error acting as if,4 the as-if com-ponent really only exists from the observer’s point ofview. From the actor’s point of view, the actions are se-rious. But in pretense, the actor is acting as if from theactor’s point of view as well” (p. 414).

In other words, functional play does not necessar-ily involve pretense (as defined by Leslie, 1987) since,as Baron-Cohen (1987) has noted, the child may regarda toy cooker, for example, as a small, yet real, cooker.Leslie (1987) cited evidence that children with autismexperience particular difficulties with symbolic play(Gould, 1986; Riguet, Taylor, Benaroya, & Klein,1981; Sigman & Ungerer, 1984) in support of his ar-gument that autism derives from an specific impair-ment in the decoupling mechanism necessary for theemergence of metarepresentations, which in turn arerequired for the production of symbolic play and forthe development of a theory of mind (Baron-Cohen,Leslie, & Frith, 1985). Baron-Cohen’s (1987) study lentfurther empirical support to this hypothesis and the pro-posed dissociation between the representational sys-tems underlying functional and symbolic play. Hefound that, although there were significant differences

68 Williams, Reddy, and Costall

between the autism and control groups (matched fornonverbal mental age and verbal comprehension) withregard to the numbers of children who produced sym-bolic acts, no such group differences were identified inrelation to the production of functional acts.

However, recent reviews of the functional and sym-bolic play abilities of children with autism suggest thatthe empirical findings may not be so clear-cut (Jarrold,1997; Jarrold, Bouchen, & Smith, 1993; Williams,Costall, & Reddy, 1999). For example, while Libby,Powell, Messer, and Jordan (1998) observed no reliabledifferences in the amount of time children with autismengaged in functional play, compared to controlsmatched for expressive and receptive language abilities,other studies have found that children with autism spentsignificantly less time playing functionally than learn-ing disabled and typically developing controls (Jarrold,Boucher, & Smith, 1996; Lewis & Boucher, 1988;Sigman & Ungerer, 1984). In addition, where functionalacts are produced by children with autism, there is someevidence to suggest they are less varied, integrated, andother-directed than those produced by controls matchedfor general mental age (Atlas, 1990; Wing, Gould,Yeates, & Brierley, 1977; Sigman & Ungerer, 1984).The identification of both quantitative and qualitativedifferences in the functional play of children withautism, along with corresponding findings that symbolicplay in structured situations is not entirely absent (Lewis& Boucher, 1988; Libby et al.,1998; Sigman & Ungerer,1984; Whyte & Owens, 1989) is incompatible withthose theoretical accounts which argue for a specificmetarepresentational deficit in autism and which alsoinsist that functional play is not reliant on the ability tometarepresent (Baron-Cohen, 1995; Leslie, 1987).

In light of such inconsistencies alternative accountshave been proposed which do not presume a qualita-tive distinction between functional and symbolic play(Harris, 1993; Jarrold, 1997; Russell, Mauthner, Sharpe& Tidswell, 1991; Williams et al.,1999). Instead theyargue that the pattern of social-communicative deficitscharacteristic of autism are a product of a general basicunderlying deficit either in executive control and plan-ning or in relating to other people. In common withVygotsky (1978), executive dysfunction accounts viewthe development of play as involving a gradual moveaway from actions determined by externally imposedconstraints towards the imposing of internal executivecontrol on actions by the children themselves, such thatthey can act independently from what they see (Harris,1993; Jarrold, 1997; Russell et al., 1991). They aretherefore better able to account for the existence ofdeficits in functional play in autism, in addition to the

4 “error acting as if” is where a child uses an object as if it was some-thing else in error, rather than pretending it is something else, whileat the same time being aware of what the object actually is.

widely accepted problems with symbolic acts. More re-cently it has been proposed that deficits in the appro-priate, functional use of objects are a logical corollaryof more basic difficulties in relating to other people(Williams et al.,1999). People play an important rolein introducing the child to the proper use of things bymaking certain aspects salient in the context of jointattention and imitation. Thus, Williams et al. arguedthat, to the extent that children with autism fail to en-gage other people in their use of objects, or use themto guide their own dealings with objects (Landry &Loveland, 1988; Mundy, Sigman, Ungerer, & Sherman,1986, 1987; Mundy, Sigman, & Kasari, 1990), they areexcluded from a great deal of information about howto use them in functionally appropriate ways.

In view of the equivocal nature of the evidencewith regard to the functional play abilities of childrenwith autism, further investigations are required in orderto assess the competing claims of the metarepresenta-tional-deficit theories versus accounts which argue formore basic cognitive or social deficits. Furthermorethere is a need to extend the precision of measurementand definition of functional play behaviors in order toexclude the possibility that the failure of some studiesto find functional play deficits in children with autismwas simply the result of their use of limited measure-ment and coding criteria. For example, Baron-Cohen’s(1987) study compared the numbers of children in eachgroup who demonstrated any examples of such play butno measure was taken of differences in either the du-ration or the quality of the play between the groups. Inaddition, the criteria for coding an act as a functionalone included the appropriate naming of an object. Itcould be argued that this may have led to an overesti-mation of the ability of the children with autism to pro-duce functional acts as it is questionable how far nam-ing can be said to involve an appropriate use of anobject (Jarrold, 1997). Another problem lies in the ten-dency of previous studies to group all forms of func-tional play under one heading. As Libby et al. (1998)themselves noted, their failure to find functional playdeficits in the children with autism may be a result ofthe lack of precision in their coding scheme. The cur-rent study was therefore designed to take a more fine-grained look at functional play in children with autism,through the development of a categorization schemethat identifies the different kinds of functional play thatcan occur. Functional play acts were subtyped in orderto evaluate them in terms of the developmental pro-gression suggested by research with typical infants andmeasures were taken of their variety, frequency, dura-tion, and integration.

Autism and Functional Play 69

METHOD

Participants

Forty-five children, between the ages of 11 monthsand 5 years 5 months, participated in the study. Theseincluded 15 typically developing infants, 15 childrenwith autism, and 15 children with Down syndrome whowere part of an ongoing research project on person-directed play in which the authors were already partic-ipating. The method of selection for the typical infantswas through the records of family doctors. A letter wassent out from the doctor’s clinics to parents of suitablyaged infants requesting volunteers for the study. Thechildren with autism were selected by approaching pro-fessional diagnostic clinics in the South of England.Each child had received a primary diagnosis of child-hood autism or autistic disorder according to the crite-ria stated in either the International Classification ofDiseases, 10th edition(ICD-10; World Health Organi-zation [WHO], 1990) or the Diagnostic and StatisticalManual IV(DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association[APA], 1994), respectively. Those with Down syndromewere recruited with the help of the Sarah Duffen Cen-tre (Portsmouth Down Syndrome Trust) based at theUniversity of Portsmouth. The children with Down syn-drome were selected to act as a suitable control groupfor the children with autism as, although they experi-ence learning difficulties, they do not exhibit the spe-cific problems in communication, socialization, andimagination associated with autism. The children wereindividually matched for general developmental ageusing the second edition of the Bayley Scales of InfantDevelopment (BSID II; Bayley, 1993) which includes ameasure of both cognitive and language ability. Eachchild with autism was matched to one child with Downsyndrome and one typically developing child. We de-cided against using a nonverbal cognitive measure formatching the groups on the grounds that this may haveselectively disadvantaged the children with autism,given that their verbal skills are usually less advancedthan their cognitive ones. Equating the participants usinga nonverbal cognitive measure therefore runs the risk ofmaking a Type 1 error, as it increases the likelihoodof finding qualitative impairments in the functionalplay of the children with autism. The groups were notmatched for chronological age (CA) or gender (Table I).

In addition the groups were assessed for languageproduction and general communicative competence(combined receptive and expressive ability). The as-sessment of language production was made using theMacArthur Communicative Inventory (Fenson et al.,

1993) which generates scores for vocabulary produc-tion based on parental report. A combined measure ofreceptive and expressive ability was obtained usingthe communication domain of the Vineland AdaptiveBehavior Scales (Sparrow, Balla, & Cicchetti, 1984)where information is obtained from parents by meansof a semistructured interview. Psychometric tests basedon parental report were used to obtain the languagemeasures in order to reduce the assessment pressure onthe very young children with autism. One-way analy-ses of variance revealed no significant differences be-tween the groups of children on the scores obtainedfrom any of the measures.

Materials

The materials consisted of a set of traditional toys(Appendix). A Sony Camcorder (CCD F335) was usedfor recording the play of the children as it was light,portable, and suitable for videotaping in small areas inthe home, where children are likely to be mobile.

Design and Procedure

Each child was visited at home either twice orthree times, depending on how much was achieved at


each visit. These visits were made 2 weeks apart. Theprocedure was designed to be naturalistic and flexible,in light of the known difficulties of working with youngchildren with autism. A set of toys were laid out, inrandom order, on the floor in front of the child. Thesame toys were presented to every child who took partin the study. Before videotaping began the parent wasasked if they would try and ensure that their child wasturned towards the camera. They were instructed torespond naturally if their child showed distress or ap-proached them during the videotaped session, but torefrain from giving directions or demonstrating partic-ular play behaviors. The child was then videotapedplaying with the toys for a total of 15 minutes. The ses-sions took place in a room of the parent’s choice, typ-ically a front room or a playroom. Videotaping wascontinuous, unless the child wandered out of the viewof the camera, or became disengaged with the objectsfor longer than 30 seconds. When this happened theexperimenter asked the parent to try and attract theirchild’s attention to the objects. Videotaping was re-sumed when the child once again became engaged withthe toys. Throughout this process the experimenter triedto remain as unobtrusive as possible. Following theobservation of the object play the same experimenteradministered the baseline psychometric tests.

Scoring

Play Behaviors

The behavior categories expanded on previousschemes (Baron-Cohen, 1987; Nicolich, 1977; Ungerer& Sigman, 1981) and were further developed from aninductive analysis of the video recordings. The ratio-nale for the development of the scheme was to conducta more detailed analysis of the functional play acts thanthat undertaken in previous studies. The functional playbehaviors were grouped into two main categories: sim-ple functional and elaborated functional, within whichthere were a number of subcategories. The terms sim-ple and elaborated as used here are not meant to implya qualitative distinction in the sense that Leslie (1987)used the categories “functional” and “symbolic,” but toreflect the developmental progression found in typicaldevelopment. Full details of the coding scheme aregiven in Table II.

Ten minutes of play time for each child were ana-lyzed from the video recordings for instances of func-tional play, using the Observer (version 3.0) software.A combination of video and timecode hardware (Pana-sonic AG 7355B VCR and RS 232 Interface) with the

Table I. Participant Characteristics

Groupa Typical Autistic Down

Male/Female 6/9 13/2 8/7Chronological age (months)

M 16.6b 48.8b,c 40.3c

SD 0.5 8.3 11.9Range 11–24 36–62 18–65

Bayley developmental age (months)M 17 16.8 17.7SD 4.8 4.4 5.4Range 11–24 11–26 11–25

Vineland, communication domain (months)M 16.5 15.5 18.2SD 5.3 8.0 6.9Range 9–30 7–32 7–30

MacArthur, language production (months)M 15.8 14.7 17.8SD 4.0 6.2 5.2Range 8–24 8–27 8–26

a n = 15 in each group.b Autistic mean significantly higher than Typical at p < .0001.c Autistic mean significantly higher than Down at p < .05.

Observer software enabled us to code the functional playbehaviors (with their associated time codes) directlyfrom the videotapes to an IBM-compatible computer.The analysis consisted of the first 10 minutes of con-tinuous footage, excluding times where the child wasnot engaged with the toys or where it was difficult tosee what they were doing. Four separate measures wereobtained: duration: the proportion of total playtime thateach child spent in a particular play category; frequency:the total number of acts performed in each play cate-gory; diversity: the total number of new versus re-peated acts in each category; integration: the extent towhich the functional acts produced were appropriatelycombined or integrated. These included single-schemeand multischeme combinations (following Fenson &Ramsay, 1980). Single-scheme combinations were de-fined as two consecutive functional acts in which thesame action was directed towards two different recipi-ents, for example, feeding one doll, then another doll,or drinking from one cup and then another. This would


exclude cases where the same action pattern is per-formed on a series of objects indiscriminately, for ex-ample, shaking a rattle, then shaking a doll, then a babybottle. Multischeme combinations were defined as thejuxtaposition of two or more different functional actsdirected towards the same recipient. These acts couldeither follow each other in a logically ordered sequence,such as tipping a teapot over a cup, then putting the cupto the mouth and making slurping noises, or reflect noessential order, for example putting a doll in the bath,then feeding the doll. The component functional actsand integrated/combined functional acts were coded asseparate analyses, in order to avoid the loss of impor-tant information about a child’s play performance, withregard to both quality and diversity. This means that inthe analysis of component acts the actions of stirring aspoon around in one cup and then in another would becoded as two elaborated functional acts, one new (if ithad been performed by the child for the first time) andone repeated. In the analysis of the level of integration

Table II. Description of the Coding Scheme

Behavior Definition and examples

Simple functional play

Functional association The child combines two objects that are functionally related to each other (e.g., putting a cup on a saucer, placing a lid on ateapot, putting a peg in a hole).

Functional use of single object The child acts on an object in a manner that reflects it’s “proper” conventional use (e.g., bringing a baby bottle or toy cup to the mouth, brushing own hair with a toy brush,placing a toy telephone to the ear).

Elaborated functional play

Functional use of multiple objects The child uses two or more objects appropriately together accompanied by a clear supporting gesture (e.g., stirring aspoon in a pot, tipping a jug over a cup, as if pouring some-thing into it. To be included in this category a child muststir the spoon around, rather than simply place it in the pot,thus distinguishing the behavior from simple functionalassociation.

Functional act supported by The child acts on an object in a manner that reflects its “proper”appropriate vocalization/gesture conventional use and accompanies this with an appropriate

vocalization or exaggerated gesture (e.g., placing a toytelephone to the ear and vocalizing, making slurping noiseswhile drinking from a baby bottle, drinking from a cup andthrowing head back in an exaggerated drinking gesture).Acts involving the appropriate use of multiple objects whichalso include a relevant vocalization or exaggerated gesturewere coded in this category.

Doll-directed functional acts The child carries out an act involving the use of a doll (e.g., brushing a doll’s hair with a toy brush, putting a dollin the bath). Acts involving a doll accompanied by a relevantvocalization were coded in this category.

of the functional acts the same actions would be scoredas one integrated single scheme combination.

The reliability of the coding scheme was assessedby having a trained graduate student code four tapes,randomly selected, from each of the groups of children.This amounted to approximately 25% of the corpus. Al-though the graduate was aware of the first author’s areaof research, she was blind to the specific purpose of thecurrent study. The student was previously trained in thecoding procedure and operation of the Observer sys-tem, using six tapes, two from each of the groups. Re-liability coding was begun once a satisfactory overallpercentage agreement of 70% or more was reached dur-ing training, between the graduate coder and the firstauthor. The resulting Cohen’s kappas were all withinacceptable limits. Those for the five functional play cat-egories listed in Table II ranged from .79–.91 with amean of .84. Kappas for new versus repeated and inte-grated versus nonintegrated functional acts were .81and .75 respectively (Cohen, 1960).

RESULTS

Exploratory data analysis revealed that the as-sumptions both of normality and homogeneity of vari-ance between groups were not satisfied. As a result thedecision was made to use nonparametric statistics (Field,


2000). A Friedman two-way ANOVA by ranks revealedthat there were no significant differences between thethree groups of children in the total amount of play timespent in functional play acts, χ2 (2) = 0.93, ns, or in thetotal number of functional acts produced, χ2 (2) = 2.48,ns. However, finer analysis did reveal reliabledifferences in both the variety and quality of the func-tional play between the different groups of children.

Diversity of Functional Play

New versus repeated functional acts.The func-tional play was first broken down into new and repeatedacts to examine its diversity (Table III). A Friedmantwo-way ANOVA revealed a significant difference be-tween the three groups with respect to both the num-ber of new acts produced, χ2 (2) = 8.87, p = .012 andthe mean percentage of total time coded spent per-forming new functional acts with the toys, χ2 (2) = 8.13,p = .017. Pairwise comparisons using the Wilcoxonsigned rank test indicated that the children with autismspent significantly less of their play time in perform-ing new functional acts relative to both the typical in-fants (z = 2.27, p = .023) and the children with Downsyndrome (z = 3.81, p = .001). (SPSS version 7.51 nowautomatically converts the T to a z value, so that it cancalculate the exact probability of the test statistic by

Table III. Mean Duration (as a Percentage of Total Play Time) and Mean Frequency of Different Types of Functional Play Behaviors Produced by Each Group of Children

Typical Autistic Down

Type of functional play M SD M SD M SD

Simple% Duration 7.18 8.00 13.64 11.22 11.68 9.69Frequency 7.60 6.39 12.60 11.21 12.40 9.37

Elaborated% Duration 10.44 11.68 0.10a 0.37 10.07 7.85Frequency 8.27 8.82 0.13a 0.52 7.93 7.59

New% Duration 8.21 7.48 2.83b 1.83 8.82 4.86Frequency 7.33 4.86 3.40b 1.96 7.80 4.16

Repeated% Duration 9.47 9.05 10.95 10.53 12.97 11.92Frequency 8.67 6.72 9.47 10.60 12.53 12.15

Integrated% Duration 3.29 5.88 0.10c 0.37 2.84 4.17Frequency 1.33 1.95 0.07c 0.26 1.07 1.28

a Autistic mean significantly lower than both Down and Typical at p < .01.b Autistic mean significantly lower than Down at p < .01 and from Typical at p < .05.c Autistic mean significantly lower than both Down and Typical at p < .05.

approximation to the normal distribution, Field, 2000.)They also produced significantly fewer new functionalplay acts than either the typically developing infants(z = 2.59, p = .01) or the children with Down syndrome(z = 2.84, p = .005). There were no significant differ-ences between the other two groups in either frequencyor duration of new functional play acts produced. AFriedman two-way ANOVA indicated no significantdifferences between the groups with respect to the pro-portion of the total playtime spent producing acts thatwere repetitions of previous ones and the total numberof repeated acts performed.

Quality of Functional Play

Simple and elaborated functional play.The func-tional play was further broken down into simple func-tional play acts and more elaborated functional play acts(see Table III). Friedman tests were performed to com-pare the groups on both the number of simple and elab-orated acts produced and the percentage of total timespent in performing each kind of play act. Althoughthere were no significant differences between the groupson either of these measures with respect to simple func-tional play acts, there were highly reliable differencesbetween the different children in both the duration, χ2

(2) = 14.58, p = .001, and frequency, χ2 (2) = 14.58,p = .001, of elaborated functional play behaviors. Pair-wise comparisons revealed that the children with autismspent less of their total play time performing elaboratedfunctional acts than both the children with Down syn-drome (z = 3.18, p = .001) and the typical infants (z =2.85, p = .004) and, in addition, produced fewer of thesetype of acts than the Down (z = 3.19, p < .001) and typ-ical (z = 2.85, p = .004) groups (see Table III). Therewere no differences between these latter groups with re-spect to either of the measures of elaborated functionalplay. The children with autism produced significantlyfewer elaborated functional acts relative to simple func-tional acts (z = 3.30, p = .001) and spent less of theirtotal play time in performing elaborated acts (z = 3.30,p = .001) compared to simple functional acts. In factonly 1 of the 15 children with autism produced any actin this category, compared to 11 of the typical childrenand 13 of the Down group. In contrast there were nodifferences in these two categories of play in the othertwo groups of children.

Subcategories of simple and elaborated functionalplay. In addition to analyses of the main categories offunctional play (simple and elaborated), between-groupdifferences in the subcategories of simple functionalplay were also investigated. As the children with autism


produced virtually no elaborated functional play, analy-ses of group differences between the children withautism and the two control groups in these subcategorieswere not undertaken. Wilcoxon matched-pairs testsshowed that the only significant difference with regardto the subcategories of simple functional play was thegreater amount of time spent by the children withautism in acts involving the functional use of singleobjects (z = 1.93, p = .053) relative to the typically de-veloping infants. There were no significant differencesbetween the Down and typical groups in any of the fivesubcategories.

Correlations of Developmental age with elabo-rated functional play.Within-group correlations wereperformed for the typical and Down groups betweenthe children’s Bayley scores and the proportion of timespent in elaborated functional play, in order to assesswhether the more developmentally advanced childrenproduced the most advanced play. Kendall’s Tau wasused, rather than the Spearman’s coefficient, due to thenumber of tied ranks (Field, 2000). A highly positiverelationship was found between developmental age andthe proportion of elaborated functional play in the typ-ical group (Kendall’s T = 0.65, p = .001). In the caseof the Down group the correlation coefficient was muchmore modest (Kendall’s T = 0.32, p = .05) though stillsignificant. It was not possible to perform a correlationin the case of the children with autism, given that theyproduced virtually no elaborated functional play.

Integrated Functional Play

Although little integrated functional play occurredin any of the groups of children, Friedman tests revealedsignificant between-group differences in duration, χ2

(2) = 5.89, p = .05, and frequency, χ2 (2) = 5.89, p =.05. Both the typical and Down syndrome groups spentmore time in integrated sequences of functional acts(typical: z = 2.20, p = .028, Down: z = 2.31, p = .021)and produced a higher frequency of such actions (typi-cal: z = 2.12, p < .034, Down: z = 2.39, p = .016).

DISCUSSION

Summary of Findings

Although the children with autism spent less timeengaged in functional play and produced fewer func-tional acts than either of the control groups, these dif-ferences did not reach significance. However, a closeranalysis of the composition of the functional play shownby each of the groups did reveal distinct differences in

terms of its diversity, elaboration, and integration. Incontrast to the children with Down syndrome and thetypically developing infants, who spent equal amountsof time in simple and elaborated functional play, thefunctional play produced by the autistic group consistedalmost entirely of simple acts involving single objects,such as bringing a cup to the mouth, or pushing a caralong the ground. In fact, only one child with autism pro-duced any behavior that could be classed in the elabo-rated functional play category. Further analysis of thediversity of functional acts revealed that the childrenwith autism produced fewer different acts than the typ-ical or Down syndrome children and spent less of theirplay time in functional play that was new compared toboth control groups. The children with autism also spentless time in integrated functional play and producedfewer functional sequences than the controls. Cautionneeds to be exercised in relation to this latter finding,however, as only half of the children in each of the con-trol groups produced integrated functional combinations.In order to examine this particular aspect of play a moredevelopmentally advanced group would be required.

Problems in Decontextualization, Decentration,and Integration

The finding that the functional play of childrenwith autism is less elaborated, less diverse, and less in-tegrated than that shown by the control groups is notconsistent with the theory-of-mind hypothesis that thistype of play should be intact, whereas “symbolic” play(the only play supposedly involving metarepresentation)is impaired (Baron-Cohen et al.,1985). Rather, it sug-gests that the children with autism experience problemsat a much earlier point than that where “true symbolicplay” (according to the definition of Leslie, 1987) issaid to emerge. Early forms of pretend play occur whenthe infant takes functional acts, such as putting a spoonto the mouth or talking on the telephone, and reproducesthem in play. These are decontextualized behaviors, de-tached from the situational context in which they orig-inally occurred and goals they usually accomplish (e.g.,eating or communicating). Research investigating theplay behavior of typical infants suggests that thisprocess begins with initial approximations, such asbringing a toy spoon to the lips, which are then elabo-rated (e.g., bringing a spoon to the lips and smackingthe lips) before becoming gradually less dependent onthe conventional object being present, so that a substi-tute object, such as a rod, can replace the spoon (Vondra& Belsky, 1991). The finding that almost all of the func-tional acts produced by the children with autism are


those which occur at the earliest stage of this decon-textualization process, such as bringing a bottle, cup, orspoon to the mouth, may indicate a difficulty in elabo-rating on their initial ability to associate a particularobject function with a particular miniaturised toy.

Likewise, the data from this study provide some ev-idence indicating that the children with autism may havedifficulty in making the transition from self-directed toother-directed functional play. Initially, pretend actionsare directed towards the self, for example, the childbrushes their own hair, before being directed towardsanother, such as their parent or a doll, and then to theseas an agent. No child with autism showed any functionalact with a doll, whereas doll-directed acts were the mostcommon elaborated functional acts produced by bothcontrol groups. Although no category of self-directedfunctional play was included in the coding scheme, areview of the tapes revealed that all groups of childrenproduced, on average, two different self-directed func-tional acts, suggesting that those with autism did nothave a particular difficulty with this kind of functionalplay. However, to fully support the proposal that chil-dren with autism experience difficulties in decentra-tion, a dimension of self- versus other-directed functionalacts would need to be included in the coding scheme.Although a high level of sequencing of functional actswas not demonstrated by any of the groups, there is ad-ditional evidence that supports the interpretation thatthe children with autism may be at an earlier point thanthe controls in the move towards the integration of pre-tend play. It could be argued that the subcategories,functional use of multiple objects and functional actssupported by relevant vocalization/exaggerated gestures,also involve a degree of integration. Only one childwith autism produced an act that could be classed ineither of these categories.

The finding that the children with autism producedvirtually no elaborated functional play, along with thesignificant positive correlations5 indicating that in bothcontrol groups the more developmentally advanced chil-dren tended to produce the most advanced functionalplay, suggests that the children with autism were at alower level of development in play than the other chil-dren. However, the findings of this study do not, nec-essarily, point simply to a developmental delay in thecase of the children with autism. The reduced diversityand elaboration of their functional play may be better

5 The more modest correlation coefficient found in the Down groupmay be explained by the lower levels of variation among the chil-dren with Down syndrome in the amount of elaborated functionalplay produced, relative to the typically developing children.

explained, not as a result of any specific problems withfunctional play per se, but as stemming from more gen-eral difficulties, whether in executive functioning, inrelating to other people, or a combination of both.

Executive Dysfunction Hypothesis

In two particular respects the data from this studyare more consonant with the predictions of those theo-rists who propose that autism is an executive disorder,rather than one involving a metarepresentational deficit.First, the finding that the functional play of the chil-dren with autism was less diverse than that of the con-trols and involved proportionately more repetition thannovelty is consistent with the predictions made by pro-ponents of an executive dysfunction in autism. Theproduction of fewer different functional acts can beexplained as a result of the difficulty that individualswith autism have in generating new schemes. Accord-ing to this approach the predominance of repetitive overnovel functional behavior might arise as a secondaryconsequence of the primary deficit in generating alter-native behavior (Jarrold, 1997). The converse is alsopossible, that a tendency to engage in perseverative be-havior interferes with the initiation of new acts (Lewis& Boucher, 1988; Russell et al.,1991). The productionof fewer new acts, whether a product of generative orperseverative executive deficits, may serve to disruptthe differentiation process, delaying the emergence ofmore elaborated functional and symbolic play acts. Sec-ond, the finding of qualitative differences in the func-tional play produced by the autistic group is not in-consistent with the executive dysfunction hypothesiswhich, unlike the metarepresentational account, doesnot make an a priori distinction between functional andsymbolic play (Jarrold, 1997). According to this ap-proach pretense develops gradually, with the develop-mental trends of decontextualization and decentrationobserved in typical development reflecting a shift awayfrom externally driven and habitual schemes towardsmore flexible, internally generated, and planned action(Harris, 1993; Jarrold, 1997).

Social Deficit Hypothesis

Another plausible hypothesis is that the problemslie not with the productionof functional schemes butwith their acquisition. Conventional actions on objectsare not predetermined but are acquired from other mem-bers of the social group (Leontiev, 1981; Loveland,1991; Rocissano, 1982; Valsiner, 1987; Williams et al.,1999). According to this proposition the lower diver-


sity and elaboration of functional play exhibited by thechildren with autism might arise as a consequence oftheir difficulties in relating to other people, rather thandeficits in executive functioning. Parents and caregiversplay a crucial role in introducing their child to theshared meanings of things. They highlight the salientfeatures of objects, explicitly demonstrate their func-tional use, physically structure their child’s actions withan object, verbally suggest (and prompt) functionalacts, and provide a model (not necessarily intentional)for their child to imitate. It is likely that such processesof social mediation would be seriously disrupted inthe case of young children with autism who show spe-cific deficits in language, imitation, and joint attention(Abrahamson & Mitchell, 1990; Dawson & Adams,1984; Landry & Loveland, 1988; Loveland & Landry,1986; Mundy et al.,1986; Smith & Bryson, 1994) andhave particular problems in making use of other peo-ple’s actions and affective responses to objects to guidetheir own use of the same objects (Sigman, Kasari,Kwon, & Yirmiya, 1992).

Problems in using other people as a source of guid-ance for how to use particular objects may account forthe reduced diversity of the functional play produced bythe children with autism. Without inspiration from otherpeople these children are left with their own, more lim-ited, ideas of interesting actions on objects (Lord, 1985).The finding that the children with autism had particulardifficulty with elaborated, but not simple, functional playcould be explained as a result of the former being muchmore dependent than the latter on mediation by otherpeople. Whereas simple functional acts such as pushinga car along the ground, or bringing a baby bottle to themouth, can be acquired through instruction by other peo-ple, they could equally well be arrived at through soli-tary exploration of the object itself (see Rocissano,1982). In other words, the physical structure of the ob-ject itself may help to shape the functional action with-out a need to fully appreciate its significance in social-behavioral terms. This raises the question of whethersuch acts indeed necessarily represent a “functional” useof a toy from the child’s point of view, or only from ourown. In contrast, the nature of the object itself is insuf-ficient to support or constrain the production of elabo-rated functional acts, which are less open to acquisitionvia solitary exploration. Such conventional actions mayrequire a greater degree of participation with other peo-ple in a shared environment “which predisposes peopleto use objects, interpret events, and so on, in particularways” (Loveland, 1991, p. 110). To produce acts suchas vocalizing on a toy phone or putting a doll to bed, thechild needs to go beyond the physical properties of an

object and appreciate its social significance (Lord, 1985).A third position is also possible, that executive dys-functions and impoverished social interactions both im-pact adversely on play in autism. Children with autismmay be thrown back on their own ideas of interestingactions as a result of a difficulty in learning about ob-jects from other people, which is further compoundedby problems in generating knowledge-of-object-useschemes. Problems in elaborating on simple functionalacts may therefore reflect a lesser degree of participa-tion with other people in a shared environment combinedwith a difficulty in moving away from actions deter-mined by externally imposed constraints.

Future Studies

The ways in which specific executive and socialdeficits might impact adversely on the play of childrenwith autism need to be explored further. The issue ofthe social mediation of object use has been particularlyneglected. To assess how difficulties in social interac-tion might affect the development of functional play inchildren with autism object-centered play with parentsneeds to be examined. However it is not only the de-velopment of functional play in autism that requiresfurther research. What is needed are longitudinal stud-ies following the development of play over time, bothsolitary and dyadic, using a detailed coding scheme tocover play behaviors from the earliest manipulations tothe most elaborate forms of pretense. At present weknow virtually nothing about the precursors to func-tional play in young children with autism and such stud-ies would enable us to examine how early behaviorsmight impact on later ones. Gender and CA also needto be taken into account in future studies, as both couldaffect the child’s experience with the toys.

In conclusion, although the data from this studydo not address the question of the relationship betweenfunctional and symbolic play (as defined by Leslie,1987), it has clearly revealed qualitative differences inthe functional play of the children with autism thatwould not be predicted by the metarepresentationaltheory of symbolic play.

APPENDIX

List of Toys Used in Study

Tea-set (including cups, saucers, jug, plates, bowlsand cutlery)

Two dolls


Baby bottleBathCloth (30 × 20 cms.)Cooker (Hob)A selection of plastic foodTwo saucepansHand puppetFinger puppetTrainPolice carSports carSmall ballRattleTelephoneHair brushDustpan and brushMusic boxPlastic hinged boxWatering-can

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research was supported by Grant R000234949 from the Economic and Social Research Council.We are extremely grateful to all the parents and chil-dren who participated in this study for their time, in-terest and helpfulness. We also thank Sarah Libby,Mike Van Duuren, and three anonymous reviewers fortheir invaluable comments on earlier versions of themanuscript.

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Taking a Closer Look at Functional Play in Children with Autism