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Executive Function Deficits And The Pretend Play Of Children With Autism: A Research Note
Author(s) -
Jarrold Christopher,
Boucher Jill,
Smith Peter K.
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
journal of child psychology and psychiatry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.652
H-Index - 211
eISSN - 1469-7610
pISSN - 0021-9630
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-7610.1994.tb01288.x
Subject(s) - autism , psychology , developmental psychology , cognition , function (biology) , executive functions , cognitive psychology , psychiatry , evolutionary biology , biology
The failure to produce pretend play seen in autism may arise from executive deficits associated with the syndrome. This experiment investigated the ability of children with autism to use various objects in pretence, the prediction being that they would have particular difficulty using props with a clear function (e.g. a pencil) to perform a different pretend function (e.g. to act as a toothbrush). However, children with autism were as likely as controls to select a prop with an inappropriate function from amongst other, nonfunctional props, suggesting that executive deficits of this particular kind cannot readily explain an absence of pretend play in autism.