Investigating the Effect of Child-Centred Play Therapy on the Development of Social Communication Skills in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Children with autism spectrum disorder may experience developmental difficulties in the areas of social communication and interaction. This study aims to investigate the effect of child-centered play therapy on the development of social communication skills in children with autism spectrum disorder. The study group consists of children aged 3-6 years with autism spectrum disorder. A quasi-experimental design was employed for the study. In the experimental group, child-centered play therapy was applied to 5 children with autism spectrum disorder for 15 weeks, 3 sessions per week, for a total of 45 sessions. ‘Social Communication Checklist-Revised for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder’ and the “Denver-II Developmental Screening Test” were used as instruments for data collection. According to the findings of the study, the Mann–Whitney U test conducted on the post-test scores of the experimental and control groups revealed statistically significant differences in all sub-dimensions of the Social Communication Checklist. Significant differences were found between the groups in social participation (Z = −2.627, p < .05, r = .83), expressive language (Z = −2.617, p ≤ .05, r = .83), receptive language (Z = −2.739, p < .05, r = .87), and imitative play (Z = −2.643, p < .05, r = .84). Regarding the Denver II Developmental Screening Test, a statistically significant difference was also found between the groups in the personal-social subscale (Z = −2.730, p < .05, r = .86). However, no statistically significant difference was observed in the language development subscale (Z = −1.586, p > .05). The results revealed that child-centered play therapy has a significant effect on the development of social communication skills in children with autism spectrum disorder. Research findings show that child-centred play therapy brings about significant improvements in the social communication skills of children with autism spectrum disorder. The progress observed in the experimental group supports the idea that play-based approaches can be an effective tool in early intervention programmes.