The Autism Society Event and Education Recordings Archive

The Meta-play Method is a novel set of play-based, parent-administered interventions, designed to decrease the core symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in toddlers. Pilot participants have shown marked decreases in ASD severity scores after 6 months of treatment, in contrast to the control subject who showed no such improvement. The purpose of this research project is to evaluate the efficacy of a novel set of play-based, parent-administered interventions, with the goal of decreasing the core symptoms of autism in toddlers.  The interventions/activities (“The Meta-play Method”) were derived from a published theory (Woodard & Van Reet, 2010), which was later termed the “Dynamic Behavior Theory of Autism” (DBTA).  Woodard and Van Reet (2010) suggested that an impairment in or failure of “thinking about” (or imagination, symbolic thinking, or meta-representation) cognitive abilities creates the core symptoms known as autism.  Associated symptoms were suggested by Woodard and Van Reet to result from later, cascading effects of this early cognitive failure.  To re-ignite the process of the cognitive revolution as a process of identification, DBTA would suggest that  children with autism would need to have thinking actively challenged by prompting 1) imaginative thought, 2) object-to-person focus, and 3) part-to-whole understanding.  The interventions of the Meta-play Method are based on these ideas.

 Participants age 2 are pre-tested on the Autism Diagnostic Observation Scale (ADOS) and the Repetitive Behavior Scale (RBS).  For the experimental group, parents are introduced to DBTA, and subsequently introduced to the Meta-play Method intervention set through month 1.  Researchers conduct ongoing training and coaching of parent-child play activities/interventions and fidelity checks twice per month during months 1 through 3, and once per month during months 4 through 6.  Pilot participants (3) have demonstrated that toddlers will engage in the activity set, and parents can be trained to implement the activities with ease.  All participants have shown marked decreases in autism severity scores after 6 months of treatment, in contrast to the control subject who showed no such improvement.  In this presentation, we will introduce the ideas that constitute DBTA, and how these concepts were used to create the Meta-play Method.  We will discuss the core activities, our results, and the limitations of our research.

Learning Objectives: