THE EFFECTS OF USING VIDEO MODELING AND RECIPROCAL IMITATION ON DEVELOPING PLAYING SKILLS IN CHILDREN WITH AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER

Play helps facilitate a child's development and learning, such as social, emotional, and cognitive skills. Delayed or abnormal development of play behaviors can inevitably influence the lifelong development of these skills. Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) cannot often understand and produce play actions. This study aimed to measure the effectiveness of each of the two programs: video modeling and reciprocal imitation, in teaching children with ASD play skills. The sample consisted of 18 children with ASD aged 5 to 8 years old, and divided into two experimental groups: the first group included 9 children with ASD who received a reciprocal imitation program: their mean age is 6.2 years, standard deviation = 0.7, and their mean IQ ratio is 87.23 with a SD = of 5.6. The second group included 9 children with ASD who received a video modeling program: their mean age is 6.7 years, standard deviation = 0.9, and their mean IQ ratio is 89.10 with SD = of 6.1. The children in both groups belong to two private primary schools associated with this project in Kenitra, Morocco. The results showed that both methods improved play skills in these children with different levels of progress, according to age, autism level, and program type. There were statistically significant differences in the post-test in favor of the video modeling group. Visual stimuli are highly solicited by children with autism. The durability of the effect of training by both methods was verified by comparing the post-test scores and the follow-up measure. The follow-up measurement revealed no significant differences between post-test and follow-up for either group. In general, video modeling was more effective than reciprocal imitation in developing play skills. It was found that learning by modeling the behaviors of peers (reciprocal imitation) is one of the effective methods, in teaching and training of most children with ASD for many skills, however video modeling is more effective, because it is based on the regular teaching of measurable behavioral units, and each skill is reduced to small steps.