Do Behavioral Approaches Teach Children with Autism to Play or are they Pretending?

Layperson Summary:

Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapy may be able to teach children with autism to play if it is coupled with other therapy approaches.

When a child learns to play, he must learn to do more than just copy behaviors. He must learn to have his own ideas and own joy from the play. This review article looked to see whether structured ABA therapy can truly teach a child to play. Most of the 13 published ABA studies that claim to teach children to play seem to have taught children play behavior and a playful approach. These studies did not use pure ABA, however, but rather combined ABA with therapy techniques such as peer support, building on existing skills, and reinforcement from the play activity itself.

Scientific Abstract