IMITATION OF PRETEND PLAY ACTS BY CHILDREN WITH AUTISM AND DOWN-SYNDROME

Although there has recently been considerable research interest in the difficulties that children with autism have engaging in pretend play, little attention has been paid to the ability of these children to im itate pretend play acts. Furthermore, suggestions that children with D own syndrome have relatively advanced abilities in pretend play have n ot been accompanied by an examination of their capacity to imitate pre tend play. Three groups of children: autistic. Down syndrome, and norm ally developing were studied for their capacity to imitate single pret end acts and a series of pretend acts that formed scripts, While the c hildren with autism were surprisingly better than the other two groups on the single-scheme task, they demonstrated specific difficulties on the multischeme task. Results are discussed in relation to current th eories of autism and the notion of imitation.